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UNIVERSITY  OF 
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SAN  DIEGO 


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A  Street  in  Old  Algiers 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 
AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


A  Study  of  Methodism 
in  Africa 


By 
LENA  LEONARD   FISHER,   Lit.D. 


How  little  you  knew  of  the  African  puzzle! 

—  Dan  Crawford 


Published  by 

The  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society 

Methodist   Episcopal  Church 

Boston,  Mass. 


Copyright,   1917 

Woman's  Fobeign  Missionary  Society 

Methodist  Episcopal  Chcbch 


FOREWORD 

An  account  of  the  activities  of  Methodism  in 
Africa  involves  a  recital  of  matters  many  and 
varied.  The  field  includes  all  sorts  of  climates, 
from  the  frozen  snows  of  the  Atlas  to  the  burning 
heat  of  Africa's  heart.  The  trail  of  the  Methodist 
missionary  winds  away  over  mountain,  forest, 
desert,  through  the  bush  and  the  region  of  the  tall 
grass.  The  folks  he  seeks  to  reach  are  of  all  com- 
plexions and  two  clearly  defined  forms  of  belief. 
Methodism  in  Africa  as  elsewhere  flings  her  line 
afar. 

These  chapters  do  not  constitute  a  report  or  a 
summary  of  reports  of  Methodist  work  in  Africa. 
Rather  they  are  designed  to  assemble  a  setting  for 
the  activities  of  our  missions  there.  While  the 
operations  of  the  church  at  large  are  outlined,  par- 
ticular emphasis  is  laid  upon  those  of  the  Woman's 
Foreign  Missionary  Society  among  the  women  and 
children  of  that  dark  land.  The  incidents  related 
are  largely  drawn  from  the  actual  experience  of 
our  own  missionaries.  Personal  observations  by 
the  author  in  North  Africa  have  been  utilized  in 
portraying  this  Mohammedan  field.  Authorities 
have  been  widely  consulted  and,  where  material 
is  used,  credit  is  given  in  the  text. 

May  a  sympathetic  reading  of  these  pages  mean 
to  the  women  of  Methodism  a  more  ready  response 
to  the  appeal  of  hands  that  beckon  from  Africa — 
those  shackled  by  Islam  or  toil-hardened  from  the 
kraal. 


CONTENTS 

Foreword     . 

Page 
iii 

Chapter  I. 

The  Land  and  the  Crescent 

1 

Chapter  II. 

The  Land  and  the  Kraal 

30 

Chapter  III. 

Come  the  Methodists    . 

54 

Chapter  IV. 

Woman  Under  the  Crescent 

82 

Chapter  V. 

The  Woman  in  Black    . 

105 

Chapter  VI. 

Little  Lost  Lambs 

.       128 

CHAPTER  I 


The  Land  and  the  Crescent 


ONLY  as  a  big  black  blot  upon  the 
missionary  horizon  of  the  world  is 
Africa  known  to  folks  a-plenty  who  call 
themselves  Christians.  Very  far  at  the  "back 
of  beyond"  in  the  missionary  vision  of  many, 
lies  mirage-like  this  great  continent,  second 
only  in  size  to  Asia,  in  the  family  of  con- 
tinents. Upon  it  you  could  place  Europe, 
the  United  States  and  Alaska,  and  then  add 
the  Chinese  empire.  Quadrupling  in  extent 
the  United  States,  and  trebling  Europe,  the 
big,  black,  triangular  blot  spreads  out  until 
it  covers  a  quarter  of  the  territory  of  the 
globe.  That  distinguished  traveler  who  once 
remarked  that  Africa's  bigness  is  its  biggest 
problem  spoke  quite  to  the  point,  although 
Africa  is  a  land  of  many  problems. 

THE   DARK  CONTINENT 

It  was  Henry  M.  Stanley  who,  after 
wandering  its  tortuous  ways  in  his  search  of 
David  Livingstone,  dubbed  Africa  "The 
Dark  Continent."  Dark  it  has  surely  been 
from    prehistoric    periods,    shrouded    in    the 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


PI 


dimness  of  speculative  theories,  down  to  the 
dark  doings  of  the  later  days,  when,  after 
the  invasion  of  its  shores  by  peoples  whose 
very  names  are  all  but  forgotten,  there  came 
one  European  nation  after  another,  moved 
by  the  common  impulse  to  wear  the  proud 
title  of  can-opener  to  Africa. 

Yet  through  the  darkness  enveloping  it,  as 
far  back  as  four  thousand  long  years  ago 
there  gleamed  through  the  curtains  of  its 
night  the  bright  light  of  Divine  Providence. 
That  Providence  set  a  Joseph  in  Egypt. 
Through  him  it  cradled  into  strength  a  great 
race  for  its  future  destiny.  The  accounts  of 
a  patriarchal  father,  the  guilty  brothers  and 
Benjamin  the  beloved  could  ill  be  spared 
from  the  treasure-store  of  divine  truth  in 
story  form  which  through  the  ages  has  been 
woven  into  the  fabric  of  godly  character. 
The  finding  by  a  real  princess  of  a  tiny, 
crying  baby  in  a  rush  cradle  hidden  among 
the  tall  reeds  which  etched  out  the  banks  of 
Africa's  greatest  historic  river;  the  story  of 
this  baby  boy,  Moses,  who  later  chose  to 
throw  overboard  his  prospective  chances  for 
great  wealth  and  political  prominence  for  a 
righteous  cause;  who  dared  to  brave  an  angry 
African  monarch  with  "Thus  saith  the  Lord," 
and  out  from  a  terror-mad,  plague-stricken 
people  led  to  liberty  a  bondaged  race  —  such 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


could  not  be  omitted  from  the  mother-stories 
told  at  bedtime  to  the  children  of  Christian 
lands. 

It  is  probable  that  Solomon's  servants, 
voyaging  with  those  of  Hiram,  "who  had 
knowledge  of  the  sea,"  to  Ophir  for  gold 
for  the  great  king,  found  it  down  in  southeast 
Africa  —  Rhodesia  of  today,  if  you  please, 
which  we  consider  Methodist  missionary 
ground. 

The  Queen  of  Sheba,  who  tried  Solomon's 
wisdom  by  difficult  questions  and  went  back  to 
her  people  with  the  praises  of  Jehovah  upon 
her  lips,  probably  had  her  kingdom  some- 
where in  the  region  of  the  Abyssinia  of  today. 

But  beyond  such  scriptural  claims  which 
can  be  voiced  by  dark  Africa  to  the  Christian 
world  for  light,  there  is  one  other  which  is 
paramount.  For  upon  a  day  in  the  long  ago 
when  the  jealousy  of  the  tyrant  Herod  would 
have  hounded  the  Christ  Child  to  the  very 
death,  it  was  the  dusky  arms  of  Africa  which 
were  outstretched  to  shelter  him.  Thus 
through  Africa  was  the  prophecy  of  Hosea 
fulfilled:  "Out  of  Egypt  have  I  called  my  Son." 

And,  too,  let  not  memory  fail  to  record 
that  upon  another  day  —  that  saddest  and 
most  tragic  day  that  ever  dawned  —  when  the 
Son  of  Man,  climbing  Calvary's  steep  on 
his     way     to     the     sacrifice     supreme,     sank 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


beneath  the  cross,  it  was  Africa,  in  the  per- 
son of  Simon  of  Cyrene,  which  bore  its 
direful  weight. 


ON  THREE  SEAS 

The  well-trodden  paths  of  Palestine  were 
the  only  ones  taken  by  the  Master,  the  little 
Sea  of  Galilee  the  only  water  sailed  by  him 
in  the  course  of  his  earthly  ministrations,  in 
his  quest  for  souls.  St.  Paul,  that  first,  that 
incomparable,  missionary  to  foreign  fields  and 
folks,  knew  but  the  "Great  Sea"  in  his 
journeys  —  the  Mediterranean  of  our  day. 

Methodist  missionaries  since  1832,  moved 
by  the  same  motives  —  love  to  God  and 
duty  to  mankind  —  which  moved  Jesus  Christ 
and  St.  Paul  to  perform  their  great  tasks, 
have  been  sailing  three  great  seas  —  the 
Atlantic,  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Indian  — 
that  upon  the  shores  of  Africa  they  might 
find  some  gateways  which  would  lead  to  the 
vast,  unknown  regions  beyond,  with  their 
races  and  tribes  to  be  reached  and  lifted  into 
the  light. 

Religiously  one  can  scarcely  yet  see  in 
Africa  the  first  red  streaks  of  a  new  day's 
dawn.  Science  and  commerce  and  trade 
have  outstripped  the  church  in  the  race  to 
possess  it.  The  fault  has  not  lain  at  the 
door  of  the  few  missionaries,  men  and  women, 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


who  through  the  years  have  toiled  in  torrid 
Africa.  They  have  "done  their  bit"  to 
redeem  the  dark  old  continent,  and  have 
done  it  well.  Their  motives,  different  from 
those  of  some  who  have  exploited  Africa, 
have  been  unassailable,  their  service  self- 
sacrificing,  persevering,  efficient,  royal.  Metho- 
dist Episcopal  missionaries  are  not  behind 
the  others  who  in  the  early  and  latter  days 
have  been  chinking  away  persistently  at 
Ethiopia's  wall  of  darkness,  and  letting  in  the 
light. 

However,  chinking  away  in  but  six  spots 
in  the  old  wall  so  seemingly  impenetrable, 
and  of  such  monstrous  proportions,  would 
not  seem  to  indicate  its  speedy  demolition. 
This  is  not  the  day  for  Jericho  episodes.  It 
is  true  that  were  full  light  to  flood  Africa 
tomorrow  our  denominational  flag  would  be 
seen  to  fly  in  six  centers  only.  Classical 
North  Africa,  the  Black  Republic  (Liberia), 
Angola,  Rhodesia,  Portuguese  East  Africa 
and  the  Belgian  Congo  —  this  last  and 
newest  in  the  very  hot,  burning  heart  of  the 
continent  —  figure  up  Methodism's  measure 
of  missionary  activities  on  African  soil. 

THE  TRAIL  MADE  EASY 

It  was  no  small  matter,   back  in   1832 
decide    in    cold    blood,    and    with    such 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


as  were  at  hand  staring  you  in  the  face,  to 
go  to  Africa.  Folks  seldom  went  there  then 
unless  circumstances  compelled,  or  they  were 
slave  traders  or  some  other  sort  of  adven- 
turers. Melville  B.  Cox  saw  four  months 
pass  him  from  the  day  when,  on  the  ship 
Jupiter,  he  "hauled  off  in  the  stream  at 
Norfolk,"  until,  anchoring  off  Monrovia,  he 
cried  with  rapture,  "I  have  seen  Liberia 
and  live!" 

It  is  altogether  a  different  matter  to  think 
of  Africa  as  the  objective  of  a  journey  today. 
Such  a  jaunt  is  only  a  trifle  more  than 
commonplace.  In  even  a  moderate-sized 
gathering  of  cultured  and  traveled  folks  in 
our  time,  there  will  be  somebody  —  or  some- 
bodies —  who  has  had  a  stateroom  on  a 
ship  making  Algiers  at  least  a  port  of  call. 
Some  one  has  affirmed  that  so  studded  with 
French  harbors  is  the  northern  coast  of  Africa 
that  the  Mediterranean  is  well  on  the  road 
to  becoming,  as  Napoleon  once  prophesied, 
a  French  lake. 

THE  COAST  OF  THE  PIRATES 

The  very  sound  of  the  name  "Barbary 
Coast,"  in  school  days  not  so  long  ago, 
smacked  of  mystery  and  pirates,  and  made 
your  hair  feel  like  rising  on  end,  whether  it 
did    or    not.     The    pirates    have    disappeared 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


along  with  their  booty  and  blood,  but  the 
fascination  of  the  shores  of  North  Africa, 
with  their  wild  history  and  storied  romance, 
overhung  always  with  a  veil  of  oriental, 
indefinable,  delicious  mystery,  must  forever 
allure. 

This  North  Africa  region  was  one  of  the 
outstanding  classical  centers  of  the  ancient 
time.  If  you  have  nothing  else  to  do  and  all 
the  money  necessary,  you  may  hunt  back  a 
bit  from  the  shore  and  toward  the  great 
desert  for  Roman  remains,  and  find  more  of 
them  than  you  can  find  in  Italy.  You  may 
see  an  arch  gleam  white  through  palm  trees, 
or  sometimes  the  broken  curves  of  an  old 
Roman  aqueduct  —  or  even  an  amphitheatre 
so  well  preserved  that  you  might  almost  look 
for  the  entrance  of  the  gladiators. 

Tunis  is  called  by  its  admirers  the  most 
beautiful  city  in  all  Africa.  Though  founded 
before  Utica  or  Carthage  it  retains  its  ancient 
name,  and  much  of  its  ancient  aspect.  With 
the  rest  of  the  land  it  has  suffered  and  bled 
under  the  heel  of  the  invader.  Some  of  its 
old  walls  and  gates,  scarred  by  a  thousand 
assaults,  still  stand.  Its  mosques,  its  bazaars, 
its  palaces  and  its  people  are  colorful  and 
picturesque.  It  was  in  Tunis  that  John 
Howard  Payne,  American  consul,  wrote  the 
lines  which  by  one  bond  have  united  a  world, 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


4 

vi 
$ 


"Home,  Sweet  Home."  Here  he  died  in 
1852.  In  the  little  graveyard  of  St.  George's 
English  Church  his  body  lay,  until  brought 
back  to  rest  in  the  homeland  of  his  heart. 

Outside  of  Tunis  you  may  stand  among 
the  ruins,  gray  and  desolate  and  sunken 
deep  in  sand,  of  ancient  Carthage,  once 
Rome's  proud  rival.  You  may  look  out 
beyond  at  her  once  famous  harbor,  now 
choked  with  silt  and  sand  and  utterly  dis- 
used. Also  you  may  reverently  tread  the 
sands  of  the  old  Roman  arena  at  Carthage, 
once  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  lovely 
young  Christian  martyrs,  Perpetua  and  Felici- 
tas.  A  hard  heart  indeed  must  be  that 
behind  eyes  which  even  today  can  read  the 
tale  of  their  torture  and  death  without  tears. 
They  died  in  the  long  ago  for  the  same  faith 
which  Christian  women  now  seek  to  reestab- 
lish in  the  land  whose  soil  was  hallowed  by 
their  blood. 

Then  there  is  Constantine,  with  a  situa- 
tion amazing  beyond  imagination.  It  is  built 
upon  a  rock  which  tops  a  ravine  surrounding 
the  town  on  three  sides.  The  sheer  walls 
of  this  moat-like  ravine  in  places  plunge 
down  a  thousand  feet  to  the  River  Rummel. 
Constantine  can  count  backwards  to  its 
Numidian  kings  who  reigned  two  hundred 
years    before    Christ.     Julius    Csesar    changed 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


once  its  name  to  his  own,  and  later  Con- 
stantine  to  his.  You  may  walk  over  paths 
today  which  were  once  trodden  by  Cyprian, 
the  bishop  beloved,  during  the  days  of  his 
long  exile  from  Carthage.  Verily  Constantine 
is  hoary  with  history. 

They  say  it  is  quite  impossible  to  describe 
Algiers  and  there  is  no  denying  the  fact 
that  your  vocabulary  does  seem  to  run  short 
even  in  an  attempt  at  it.  At  any  rate  it  is 
one  of  the  bright  spots  France  has  made  on 
the  Mediterranean.  There  are  all  sorts  of 
pet  names  for  this  old  city,  once  a  pirate 
stronghold,  now  fluttering  with  joyous  life 
like  some  white  plumed  bird  under  summer 
skies.  The  Arabs  know  it  by  a  name  which, 
being  interpreted,  means  "The  White,"  liken- 
ing it  to  a  diamond  set  in  emeralds.  And 
besides,  there  are  poetic  names  galore  for  it. 
The  plain  English  of  it  is  that  Algiers  seems  /*m 
extraordinarily  white  and  most  lovely  —  and  ' 
French  —  as  you  catch  your  first  glimpse  of 
it  from  the  deck  of  your  steamer  in-bound 
from  Gibraltar. 

But  it  is  when  you  visit  the  Arab  quarter 
—  the  old  town  —  hidden  mysteriously  back 
of  the  modern,  white,  French-looking  houses, 
that  you  suddenly  become  aware  of  the  real 
charm  and  fascination  of  Algiers.  For  here 
you  will  rub  up  against  the  old  East  —  the 


10 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


real  thing,  with  its  queer  stair-stepped  streets; 
its  houses  which  turn  their  backs  upon  you 
and  lean  toward  one  another  in  a  neighborly 
fashion  overhead;  its  veiled,  soft-treading 
women  who  flit  ghost-like  by;  its  dirty  little 
eastern  shops  where  dignified,  turbanned 
proprietors  dispense,  for  a  consideration, 
strange  things  to  eat,  or  dangle  before  your 
fascinated  eyes  wonderful  products  of  oriental 
handicraft;  and — its  smells! 

When  you  are  sojourning  in  old  Algiers 
you  have  trekked  a  thousand  miles  south 
from  Paris,  and  are  in  a  region  where  the 
whole  countryside  basks  in  the  golden  warmth 
of  an  African  sun.  To  be  sure  in  the  summer 
the  withering  heat  from  the  Sahara  oven 
sweeps  over  this  region,  but  are  there  not 
two  snow-crowned  Atlas  ranges  in  the  rear, 
to  order  it  back?  And  does  not  the  refreshing 
coolness  of  the  blue  sea  in  front  add  its  quota 
to  make  what  is  pronounced  to  be  a  "per- 
fect sub-tropical  climate"? 

But  Tunis  and  Constantine  and  Algiers 
are  but  the  well-known  high  lights  in  this 
inadequate  sketch,  which  is  to  serve  as  a 
background  to  Methodism's  missionary  ac- 
tivities in  North  Africa  —  and  what  a  field ! 
It  was  but  sixty  years  after  the  crucifixion 
that  Christianity  first  found  entrance  to  old 
Carthage  by   way  of   Rome,   and  from  there 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


11 


spread  throughout  what  is  Methodism's 
ground  today.  Later,  across  this  very  stretch, 
drove  the  Arabian  Mohammedan  conquer- 
ors, leaving  death  and  ruin  in  their  track 
and  all  but  obliterating  the  fact  that  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ  had  once  flourished 
here.  Many  a  time  has  the  Barbary  Coast 
been  swept  by  invasions.  Now  have  come 
the  Methodists,  and  in  the  land  where  once 
rang  the  wild  cry  of  Moslem  triumph,  as 
the  False  Prophet  was  enthroned,  the  heralds 
of  Jesus  Christ  proclaim  him  King  of  kings 
and  Lord  of  lords. 


FOLKS  FIRST 

After  all,  folks  in  almost  any  part  of  crea- 
tion are  much  more  interesting  than  the 
places  they  happen  to  live  in,  or  than  geog- 
raphy, history  or  climate.  That  traveler 
who  uses  much  of  his  time  in  a  strange  place 
in  getting  acquainted  with  the  folks  will 
learn  much  of  importance  which  cathedrals 
and  art  galleries  cannot  teach  him  —  so  the 
market  places  should  not  be  neglected. 

Methodist  missionaries  here  must  perforce 
speak  the  language  of  the  nation  of  the  tri- 
color, since  both  Algeria  and  Tunisia  are 
French  colonies,  and  the  language  is  spoken 
in  all  the  cities  and  larger  towns.  Travelers 
in    French    Africa    will    find    themselves    at 


12 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


serious  disadvantage  if  their  list  of  available 
languages  does  not  include  French.  Either 
in  a  case  of  straight  shopping  with  the  coin 
of  the  realm,  sous  and  francs,  or  in  a  more 
tragic  event  where  exchange  is  a  part  of  the 
process,  and  all  of  it  is  a  hurry-up  affair, 
it  must  be  depended  upon.  Likewise,  if  you 
speak  Italian  or  Spanish  you  will,  in  a  jaunt 
across  Methodist  North  Africa,  have  ample 
use  for  them,  for  in  Tunisia  thousands  of 
Italians  who  have  swarmed  to  her  smiling 
shores  have  found  homes.  West  of  this, 
even  in  Algiers  itself,  there  is  an  emphatic 
Spanish  element,  while  no  visit  to  the  larger 
cities  and  towns  would  be  quite  complete 
without  at  least  a  look  at  the  Jewish  quar- 
ters —  real  ghettos. 


ABORIGINES  AND  INVADERS 

The  two  races,  however,  the  Berber  and 
the  Arab,  which  make  up  the  distinctive 
Moslem  population  of  Methodist  territory 
along  the  Mediterranean,  are  those  with 
which,  figuratively  speaking,  we  should  like 
to  neighbor  in  this  book.  The  work  among 
these  is  our  big  task  in  North  Africa,  because 
it  is  here  that  Methodism  has  a  more  direct 
contact  with  pure  Mohammedanism  than 
possibly  in  any  other  place  in  the  world. 

The    Berber    is    very    little    talked    about. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


13 


Even  his  racial  name  has  a  strange  sound 
to  many  ears.  Yet  numerically  he  has  passed 
the  Arab  in  this  field.  There  are  nine  mil- 
lions or  more  of  him.  No  one  actually  knows 
where  he  hails  from.  His  origin  may  have 
been  Semitic,  but  conquered  successively  by 
Carthaginians,  Phoenicians,  Romans,  Vandals 
and  Arabs,  the  Berber  of  today  represents  a 
composite  of  all  of  them.  His  most  interest- 
ing industrial  product  is  a  peculiar  and  highly 
varnished  red  and  yellow  pottery,  decorated 
with  traditional  Roman  and  Phoenician 
designs. 

These  strange  folks,  probably  the  primeval 
race  of  North  Africa,  now  have  their  habitat 
in  the  great  stretch  of  snow  mountains  whose 
dim  outline  may  occasionally,  and  for  a  few 
elusive  moments,  be  seen  from  Algiers,  above 
that  of  the  nearer  mountains,  which  is  an 
everyday  sight.  Seeing  the  mountains  of 
Kabylia  from  Algiers  is  like  viewing  the 
Jungfrau  from  Interlaken,  or  Mt.  Ranier 
from  Seattle  —  sometimes  you  may  see  them 
and  again,  if  your  time  be  limited,  you  may 
not. 

They  tell  us  that  mountains  have  more 
than  once  saved  a  race  from  absorption  or 
extinction.  The  heights  of  Kabylia  might 
furnish  another  proof  of  this  statement.  The 
Berber,  once  ruler  of  all  he  surveyed  in  North 


14 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Africa,  was  long  ago  pushed  back  into  these 
mountain  fastnesses  by  the  Arab  invaders. 
Though  yielding  under  vigorous  protest  to 
the  demand  which  eventually  attached  him 
to  the  wheels  of  France's  victorious  chariot 
on  its  way  through  North  Africa,  he  continues 
to  build  his  house  of  sun-baked  clay  in  his 
mountain  stronghold,  speak  his  own  language 
and  retain  his  own  character  and  ways,  which 
are  not  at  all  those  of  his  Arab  conquerors. 
As  compared  with  the  Arabs,  the  Berbers 
with  their  fair  complexions,  blue  eyes  and 
red  hair  are  more  physically  fit,  more  capable 
and  far  more  progressive. 


THE  CROSS  BEFORE  THE  CRESCENT 

Some  scholars  hold  that  the  Berbers  at 
the  time  of  the  Arab  invasion  were  at  least 
nominal  Christians.  They  point  out  in  proof 
of  their  view  the  fact  that  many  Berber 
women  wear  the  sign  of  the  cross  tattooed 
upon  their  foreheads  between  the  eyes,  while 
the  men  wear  it  upon  their  arms  and  in  the 
palms  of  their  hands.  The  keeping  of  our 
Sabbath  as  their  prayer  day  instead  of  the 
Moslem  Friday  would  also  seem  to  be  an 
indication  of  the  same  thing. 

The  religion  of  the  Berbers  is  of  a  "pale" 

Id  llp'ni^?;!"!!?!  f§'""  Mohammedan  type.    That  is,  they  are  not  so 

strict   in   their  religious  observances  and   are 


W, 


U" 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


15 


far  from  being  so  fanatical  as  the  Arabs. 
It  is  intimated  by  missionaries  in  our  North 
African  field  that  the  antipathy  existing 
between  the  two  races,  coupled  with  the 
Berber's  modified  Moslemism,  affords  an 
unusual  avenue  of  approach  by  which  Chris- 
tianity may  reach  this  ancient  people. 

Another  point  of  difference  between  the 
two  races  is  in  their  estimate  of  women. 
An  eminent  traveler  in  the  Orient  remarks 
that  the  effect  of  the  veil  and  ordinary  style 
of  dress  of  the  Mohammedan  woman  is  to 
hide  and  unsex  her.  Convinced  of  this,  it  is 
a  distinct  relief,  in  investigating  feminine 
affairs  among  the  Berbers,  to  find  that  no 
matter  where  you  discover  the  Berber  woman 
(the  Kabyles  of  North  Africa  being  but  one 
tribe  of  many  included  in  the  broader  term 
" Berber")  you  may  see  her  face  if  you  care 
to  —  a  pretty  one,  usually,  —  for  she  is  un- 
veiled. And  the  unveiling  of  the  women  of 
the  tribes  of  the  Berbers  as  the  visible  token 
of  their  release  from  other  forms  of  bondage, 
more  or  less  universal  among  Mohammedan  \ 
women.  In  no  tribe  where  Arab  blood  pre- 
dominates do  women  have  the  same  position 
and  regard  as  among  the  Berbers.  And  we 
are  glad,  knowing  a  bit  of  the  Arab  women 
of  North  Africa,  with  the  hand  of  Islam 
heavy  upon  them,  that  off  in  the  mountains 


1G 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


of  Kabylia  there  are  those  who  are  hand- 
some and  gay,  who  enjoy  at  least  a  measure 
of  regard  from  their  men,  who  wear  bright 
dresses  of  yellow  and  red,  clasped  with  great 
brooches  of  silver  and  coral,  and  who  may 
look  out  upon  their  own  lovely  mountains 
with  unveiled  eyes. 


THE  ARAB 

By  no  means  is  the  original  habitat  of 
the  second  race  to  which  Methodist  mis- 
sionaries in  North  Africa  are  giving  particular 
attention  —  the  Arabs  —  to  be  found  in  "The 
Thousand  And  One  Nights,"  though  as 
encountered  there  you  are  more  than  likely 
to  fall  victim  to  their  unique  fascination. 
The  name  "  Arab  "  began  to  be  known  in  Solo- 
mon's day,  but  long  before  the  towers  and 
turrets  of  his  great  temple  arose,  the  Arabs 
wandered  over  the  mountains  and  deserts 
of  Arabia,  and  traced  their  lineage  (those  of 
the  northern  tribes  especially)  through  their 
father  Ishmael,   back  to  Abraham   himself. 

JliJl,'  Arabia,  like  Palestine,  and  second  to  it  in 
,|  this   respect,    is   rich   in    sacred    memories   of 

iHijl'  God's  dealings  with  his  children,  accounts 
\  of  which  go  to  make  up  impressive  and  im- 
portant chapters  of  the  Old  Testament. 
!'  "Here  lived  and  suffered  the  holy  patriarch, 

||1(  Job;  here  Moses  when  a  stranger  and  a  shep- 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


17 


herd,  saw  the  burning,  unconsuming  bush; 
here  Elijah  found  shelter  from  the  rage  of 
persecution;  here  was  the  scene  of  all  the 
marvelous  display  of  divine  power  and  mercy 
that  followed  the  deliverance  of  Israel  from 
the  Egyptian  yoke  and  accompanied  their 
journeyings  to  the  Promised  Land,  and  here 
Jehovah  manifested  himself  in  visible  glory 
to  his   people." 

The  geography  of  Arabia  is  not  to  be  dis- 
cussed here,  except  as  out  from  its  desolate 
wastes  where  the  "wind  of  the  desert"  is 
born,  and  the  mirage  lifts  its  deceptive  beauty 
to  the  sight  of  the  famished  traveler,  where 
storied  rivers  run,  and  sunsets  fall  upon  grace- 
fully pendant  date  palms;  out  from  its 
legends  and  ruins,  and  traces  of  lost  empires, 
and  mayhap  even  from  where  was  the  cradle 
of  humankind  itself,  has  come  the  race  whose 
descendants  our  missionaries  in  North  Africa 
now  strive  to  reach  and  save. 

From  the  day  when  unhappy  Hagar  and  her 
infant  son  became  wanderers  in  the  wilderness 
of  Beersheba,  the  descendants  of  Ishmael,  who 
according  to  divine  promise  and  in  a  peculiar 
and  definite  sense  have  preserved  themselves 
a  "nation,"  have  been  indeed  "wanderers" — 
nomads.  More  than  any  other  people  in  the 
world,  perhaps,  the  Arab  has  ranged  away  from 
his  natural  geographical  boundaries. 


18 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


A  missionary  journey,  whose  instruments 
were  fire  and  sword,  carried  the  Arabs,  along 
with  the  Moslem  faith  with  which  they  sought 
to  sweep  the  world,  into  North  Africa.  This 
occurred  in  the  course  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Moslem  conquest  in  the  years  immediately 
succeeding  the  death  of  the  Prophet  in  632  A.D. 
There  ever  since  they  have  been. 

Generally  speaking,  our  missionaries  meet 
the  Arabs  as  the  "town  dwellers  "  in  their  homes 
tucked  away  in  the  narrow,  filthy,  crooked 
streets  of  the  native  quarters  of  great  cities 
like  Algiers,  or  as  "men  of  the  desert,"  in  their 
tents  of  black  or  brown  camel's  hair.  In  their 
ways  of  living,  their  dress,  food,  dwellings, 
customs  and  government,  these  desert  nomads 
are  as  their  fathers  were  thousands  of  years  ago. 

Dr.  Zwemer  writing  of  the  physical  charac- 
teristics of  the  Arabs  says:  "The  typical  Arab 
face  is  round-oval,  but  the  general  leanness  of 
the  features  detracts  from  its  regularity;  the 
bones  are  prominent;  the  eyebrows  long  and 
bushy;  the  eye  small,  deep-set,  fiery  black  or 
dark,  deep  brown.  The  face  expresses  half- 
dignity,  half-cunning,  and  is  not  unkindly, 
though  never  smiling  or  benignant.  The  figure 
is  well-knit,  muscular,  long-limbed,  never  fat." 
As  to  his  character,  the  same  authority  declares 
that  the  Arab  is  polite,  good-natured,  lively, 
manly,  patient,  courageous,  and  hospitable  to 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


19 


a  fault,  but  that  at  the  same  time  he  is  con- 
temptuous, untruthful,  sensuous,  distrustful, 
proud  and  superstitious. 


SUPERSTITION'S  SWAY 

But  whether  of  the  city  or  the  desert,  you 
will  find  the  Arab  reeking  with  absurd  super- 
stitions and  legends.  The  evil  eye  is  always  a 
terror,  and  is  only  to  be  warded  off  by  the  wear- 
ing of  amulets  and  charms.  Beads,  old  coins, 
teeth,  holy  earth  in  small  bags,  a  Koran  or 
chapter  from  it,  are  all  worn  for  their  beneficent 
effects.  A  universal  superstition  is  the  belief 
that  to  his  everlasting  undoing  there  may  be 
cast  upon  his  person  or  belongings,  the  ill  luck 
of  the  "evil  eye."  Let  a  stranger,  particularly 
one  not  a  follower  of  the  Prophet,  look  intently 
at  something  an  Arab  wears  or  carries,  and  he 
will  immediately  moisten  his  finger  and  pass 
it  over  the  article  in  question  in  order  to  check 
the  spell.  A  certain  token  of  good  luck  is  the 
image  of  a  hand  called  the  hand  of  Fatma. 
This  fetish  is  probably  named  after  the  sister 
of  the  Prophet  and  painted  over  the  doors  of 
houses,  upon  the  walls  of  shops,  or  even  mingling 
among  mosque  decorations,  or  worn  as  an 
ornament,  it  is  believed  to  be  absolutely  sure 
to  ward  off  the  malignant  effects  of  the  much- 
to-be-dreaded  witchery. 

Of  legends   there   are   many,   some 


20 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


some  beautiful  in  their  poetic  delicacy.  In  the 
former  class  is  the  belief  that  the  eyes  of  a  camel 
are  like  magnifying  glasses,  increasing  the  size 
of  his  master  seven  times.  His  master  may 
beat  and  abuse  the  creature,  though  close  to 
teeth  and  hoofs,  and  not  fear,  as  he  appears 
seven  times  larger  than  he  is.  "It  is  not," 
says  the  Arab  story-teller,  '  'because  the  camel 
is  stupid,  nor  yet  because  he  is  timid.  It  is  be- 
cause of  a  wise  provision  whereby  Allah  suited 
him  to  the  weakness  of  men." 

Again,  we  hear  the  pretty  legend  of  the  origin 
of  the  date-palm,  the  desert  Arab's  most 
priceless  treasure,  as  springing  up  from  a  few 
grains  of  dust  which  fell  from  the  fingers  of 
Allah,  as  Adam  was  created. 


Ill 

a  i   'I 

igjra 


ISLAM  APPRAISES  WOMEN 

There  is  evidently  a  sharp  contrast  between 
the  Berber  woman  in  North  Africa  and  her 
Arab  sister.  The  Berber  in  her  Kabylia  home 
lives,  as  one  writer  has  said,  in  a  country 
"where  the  population  is  complete,  and  women 
both  see  and  are  seen,  and  share  alike  in 
labor  and  its  reward."  If  the  North  African 
Arab  woman  of  the  cities  walks  abroad,  it  is 
only  with  the  permission  of  the  husband,  who 
owns  her  soul  and  body.  Even  then  her  pa- 
thetic, grotesque  figure  in  hideous  clothes  and 
disfiguring  veil,  strikes  the  heart  with  unutter- 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


21 


able  pity.  In  the  long  ago,  it  is  said,  Arab 
girls  were  often  buried  alive.  Dr.  Zwemer 
declares  that  Mohammed  improved  on  the 
barbaric  method  and  discovered  a  way  by 
which  not  some  but  all  females  could  be  buried 
alive  without  being  murdered  —  namely,  the 
veil.  That  the  female  of  the  Arabian  species 
is  under  the  ban  to  a  degree  almost  unimagin- 
able, is  confirmed  by  the  statement  of  the 
Dutch  scholar,  Hurgronje,  who  says  in  regard 
to  the  position  of  Arabian  women:  "Moslem 
literature,  it  is  true,  exhibits  isolated  glimpses 
of  a  worthier  estimation  of  woman,  but  the 
later  view  which  comes  more  and  more  into 
prevalence  is  the  only  one  which  finds  expres- 
sion in  sacred  traditions,  which  represents  hell 
as  full  of  women,  and  refuses  to  acknowledge 
in  the  woman,  apart  from  rare  exceptions, 
either  reason  or  religion;  in  poems,  which  refer 
all  the  evil  in  the  world  to  the  woman  as  its 
root;  in  proverbs,  which  represent  a  careful 
education  of  girls  as  mere  wastefulness.  Ulti- 
mately, therefore,  there  is  only  conceded  to  the 
women  the  fascinating  charm  with  which  Allah 
has  endowed  her,  in  order  to  afford  the  man 
now  and  then  in  his  earthly  existence  the  pre- 
libationof  paradise,  and  to  bear  him  children." 

WHERE  THE   CRESCENT  GLEAMS 

Obviously    no    comprehensive    consideration 
ot   the   religion   met   with   by   missionaries   in 


22 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


North  Africa  —  the  religion  of  the  Arab  and 
the  Berber,  Mohammedanism  —  can  here  be 
given.  It  is  practically  North  Africa's  one 
religion.  The  libraries  of  the  world  bulge  with 
books  on  the  subject,  and  more  volumes  on  it 
will  undoubtedly  be  written.  Theories  have 
been  woven  and  will  be  woven  as  to  how  such 
influence  and  power  as  were  Mohammed's 
could  spread,  until  a  hundred  years  after  his 
birth  "his  name  joined  to  that  of  the  Almighty 
was  called  out  from  ten  thousand  mosques  five 
times  daily  from  Muscat  to  Morocco,  and  his 
new  religion  was  sweeping  everything  before 
it  in  three  continents." 

If  among  any  people,  or  by  one  individual, 
belief  in  a  deity  is  held,  and  the  doctrines  of  a 
sacred  book,  for  the  establishment  of  moral 
order,  adhered  to,  the  character  of  such  will 
be  the  outgrowth  of  the  sum  of  the  two.  This 
is  true  in  the  Christian  religion,  with  Jehovah 
as  its  God  and  the  Bible  as  its  inspired  book. 
It  is  also  true  of  the  Moslem  character,  which 
is  the  product  of  its  God,  its  Prophet  and  its 
Book.  For  importance  and  position  Moham- 
med, the  Prophet,  stands  above  either  God  or 
the  Koran.  For  the  Moslem  to  swear  by  Allah 
may  be  an  impressive  but  common  oath,  but 
to  swear  "by  the  beard  of  the  Prophet,"  it 
would  seem,  carries  with  it  more  weight. 

However,  the  Moslem  believes  in  one  God, 


z:zz: 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


23 


with  all  the  passion  of  his  passionate  soul. 
It  is  said  that  even  an  Arab  child  will  resent 
with  anger  any  reference  made  by  a  missionary 
to  Jesus  Christ  which  would  interfere  with  his 
belief  in  this  doctrine.  But  the  Moslem's  God 
is  far  off  from  the  God  of  the  Christian  who  is 
taught  at  his  mother's  knee  that  God  is  a 
loving  Heavenly  Father,  brooding  over  him 
with  ever-increasing  tenderness  —  for  "God 
is  love."  Monotheism  is  clutched  to  the  breast 
of  the  Moslem  with  the  fierceness  of  fanati- 
cism, yet  the  attribute  of  love,  which  is  the 
very  essence  of  God,  is  beyond  his  ken.  The 
chief  elements  in  the  character  of  this  "one 
God"  as  seen  by  the  Moslem  are  those  of  a 
merciless,  ruthless,  omnipotent  tyrant,  who 
has  had  little  interest  in  the  world  or  the  dwellers 
therein  since  he  created  them.  One  writer 
calls  Allah,  the  God  of  Islam,  "an  absentee 
landlord  who,  jealous  of  man,  wound  the  clock 
of  the  universe  and  went  away  forever." 


THE   PROPHET   OF  MECCA 

In  the  year  570,  A.D.,  Mohammed  was  born 
in  Mecca,  the  Holy  City  of  the  Moslem  wrorld. 
He  was  not  a  mere  camel  driver  as  some  have 
asserted,  but  came  from  aristocratic  stock. 
He  married  a  woman  with  money,  and  like- 
wise with  a  strong  mind,  the  latter  fact  being 
proved    convincingly    by    her    preventing    her 


24 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


young  spouse  —  some  years  her  junior  —  from 
taking  another  wife  during  her  lifetime.  This 
Arabian  lady,  Khadijah,  was  the  first  believer 
in  the  new  faith  promulgated  by  her  husband, 
and  her  conversion  was  followed  by  that  of 
his  two  adopted  children,  and  then  his  closest 
friend.  Evidently  Mohammed's  missionary 
operations  began  at  home,  but  a  world  com- 
passed by  belief  in  his  doctrines  proves  that 
they  did  not  end  there. 

Authorities  agree  that  no  conclusive  estima- 
tion of  the  character  of  the  prophet  of  Arabia 
can  be  formed  without  some  knowledge  of  his 
associations  with  women.  Yet  so  revolting 
are  the  evidences  of  brutality  and  obscenity 
connected  with  such  revelations,  that  scholars 
are  loath  to  lift  the  veil  which  obscures  them. 
One  writer  affirms  that  "there  are  depths  of 
filth  in  the  Prophet's  character  which  may 
assort  well  enough  with  the  depraved  sensuality 
of  the  bulk  of  his  followers,  but  which  are  simply 
loathsome  in  the  eyes  of  all  over  whom  Chris- 
tianity in  any  measure  or  degree  has  influence." 

He  is  accused  of  breaking  repeatedly  every 
commandment  in  the  decalogue.  He  never 
approached  in  life  or  teaching  the  precepts  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  He  not  only  ignored 
the  old  laws  of  his  own  land,  but  he  did 
not  even  keep  those  made  by  himself  and  for 
the  revelation  of  which  he  contended  he  was 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


2.1 


appointed  by  God.  Witness  the  instance  of 
his  taking  ten  wives,  and  negotiating  for  thirty 
more  after  the  death  of  Khadijah,  while  pre- 
vious to  that  time  and  by  his  own  decree  the 
faithful  were  limited  to  four! 

Two  hundred  and  one  names  are  given  to 
him  by  his  followers,  among  them  being  "Light 
of  God,"  "Peace  of  the  World,"  "Glory  of 
the  Ages,"  etc.  Yet  the  bearer  of  these  exalted 
names  almost  to  the  day  of  his  death  was  not 
only  corrupt  in  heart  and  life  but  was  planning 
and  executing  horrible  deeds  of  bloody  conquest. 
His  name  is  by  all  odds  the  iavorite  one  for 
Moslem  boys.  "  Mohammeds "  of  today  are 
numerous.  This  name  is  never  uttered  without 
a  prayer,  and,  it  is  avowed,  is  written  upon 
the  throne  of  God,  where  in  the  glories  of 
Heaven  he  has  usurped  the  place  of  the  Son 
of  God  himself.  And  the  Moslem  believes 
that  he  approaches  perfection  only  as  he 
becomes  like  Mohammed! 

That  Mohammed  was  sincere  and  genuine 
in  believing  himself  called  of  God  to  his  mis- 
sion and  that  the  sins  which  stained  his  later 
years  were  only  as  specks  on  the  sun  is  claimed 
by  some  who  have  studied  his  life  and  his 
course.  Others,  including  Dr.  Zwemer,  see  in 
Mohammed  only  the  skill  of  a  clever  impostor 
from  the  day  of  his  first  message  to  the  day  of 
his  death. 


26 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Yet  today  Mohammed's  following  is  as  wide 
as  the  world,  and  before  his  name  there  bow 
in  allegiance  possibly  250,000,000  of  the  people 
of  the  earth,  while  the  religion  which  he  founded 
still  proceeds  upon  its  victorious  way. 


a 


ISLAM'S  BIBLE 

In  fierce  devotion  the  Moslem  clasps  to  his 
heart  his  holy  book,  the  Koran,  which  Moham- 
med affirmed  was  given  him  of  God.  The 
book  is  small,  less  in  size  than  our  own  New 
Testament.  Even  the  pious  Moslem  is  unable 
to  read  it  without  a  commentary,  because 
of  its  "jumbled"  character.  Every  sort  of 
fact  and  fancy,  law  and  legend,  is  thrown  to- 
gether piecemeal.  It  is  written  in  the  Prophet's 
own  tongue,  the  Arabic,  which  multitudes  of 
his  followers  can  neither  read  nor  understand. 
Miraculous  qualities  are  ascribed  to  the  mere 
volume  itself,  the  Prophet  teaching  that  if 
it  were  wrapped  in  a  skin  and  thrown  into  the 
fire,  it  would  not  burn.  It  must  never  be 
touched  with  unwashed  hands,  nor  carried 
below  the  waist,  never  laid  upon  the  floor  — 
yet  parts  of  it  are  so  obscene  and  indecent 
that  it  could  neither  be  translated  into  English 
nor  read  before  a  Christian  audience.  Poetical 
beauties  the  Koran  may  contain,  and  noble 
expressions  and  lofty  descriptions,  but  these 
are  outweighed   by   the   glaring  falsity   of  its 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


27 


teaching,  and  its  absurd  defects.  It  has  been 
responsible  for  unmeasured  misery  through 
all  the  years  in  its  upholding  of  polygamy, 
slavery,  religious  intolerance  and  the  seclusion 
and  infinite  degradation  of  women,  and  the 
end  of  such  suffering  as  its  teaching,  virile  even 
now,  engenders  is  not  yet. 

But  of  all  its  errors,  its  crowning  one  is  its 
obliviousness  to  sin;  and  its  greatest  failure, 
that  of  not  recognizing  the  necessity  of  recon- 
ciliation of  the  soul,  through  Jesus  Christ, 
with  a  just  but  loving  God. 

Most  inadequately  have  these  brief  and 
necessarily  fragmentary  paragraphs  set  forth 
the  greatness,  the  need  and  the  opportunity 
in  Methodism's  northern  section  of  its  African 
field.  Not  a  topic  has  been  touched  upon 
but  could  be  almost  indefinitely  elaborated. 
What  is  here  set  down  concerning  the  country 
and  the  people  with  their  religion  is  only  a 
background  for  the  study  of  the  work  of  our 
missionaries  in  this  field. 

METHODISM  AND  MOHAMMEDANISM 

Previous  to  1910,  when  our  work  in  North 
Africa  was  organized,  that  great  and  import- 
ant field  stretching  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
to  Egypt  was  entirely  unoccupied  by  any  of 
the  larger  denominational  bodies.  Bounded  ^ 
on  the  north  by   2500    miles   of  the  Barbary 

'  MM, 


28 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Coast  line,  and  southward  to  the  very  heart 
of  the  continent  itself,  there  was  included  a 
region  for  whose  Moslem  millions  no  organized 
work  of  evangelization  had  ever  been  attempted. 

This  door  of  opportunity  for  Methodist 
effort  among  North  African  Moslems  swung 
on  its  hinges  in  1907,  previous  to  the  World's 
Sunday  School  Convention.  At  that  time, 
largely  through  the  efforts  of  Bishop  Hartzell, 
arrangements  were  made  whereby  delegates 
on  their  way  to  Rome  might,  by  stopping  at 
Algiers,  catch  a  glimpse  of  this  vast  and  neg- 
lected field  of  North  Africa,  with  its  twenty 
millions  of  Moslems.  Mrs.  Hartzell  after 
studying  for  two  months  the  situation  in  Algiers 
was,  with  the  bishop,  convinced  that  this 
must  be  in  the  coming  years  the  center  of  a 
great  work. 

The  Mission  in  North  Africa  was  organized 
in  Algiers  in  1910  —  which  is  the  story  in  a 
nutshell  of  an  epochal  event  in  Methodist 
history. 

Dr.  Edwin  F.  Frease  was  called  from  India 
to  become  superintendent  of  the  new  Mission. 
A  corps  of  workers,  formerly  of  the  undenomi- 
national "North  Africa  Mission,"  and  superbly 
equipped  with  language  and  knowledge  of 
the  people,  was  ready  to  serve  at  the  call  of 
the  church.  These,  with  the  assistance  of 
native  helpers,  carry  on  the  work  in  Algiers, 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


29 


Constantine,  Tunis,  Fort  National,  Oran,  and 
other  points. 

Evangelistic  work  among  Arabs  and  Berbers, 
homes  for  both  Moslem  boys  and  girls,  work 
for  women,  Moslem  and  French,  Scripture 
translation,  and  some  industrial  instruction, 
make  up  the  general  outline  of  our  missionary 
activities. 


CHAPTER  II 


The  Land  and  the  Kraal 

THE  proportions  of  the  missionary  claim 
staked  out  for  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  in  Africa,  approached  too  ab- 
ruptly, are  almost  overwhelming.  According 
to  Bishop  Hartzell,  our  six  fields  represent  a 
combined  population  of  over  30,000,000  people, 
and  lest  some  fear  that  Methodism's  measure 
is  not  quite  full,  the  good  bishop  naively 
remarks  that  this  number  will  doubtless  double 
every  fifty  years! 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  our  obligation  our 
great  church  has  scarcely  made  a  perceptible 
move  toward  her  goal.  Millions  of  souls  for 
whose  salvation  she  alone  is  responsible  are 
waiting  for  her  to  overtake  them,  but  they 
wait    in    vain  —  and    night    for    them    draws 


near. 


THE  FIELD  AFAR 


Outside  of  North  Africa,  Methodist  mis- 
sions are  entirely  among  the  people  of  the 
great  black  population  of  the  continent,  who 
vastly  outnumber  the  whites.  This  popula- 
tion is  made  up  of  diverse  races  and  peoples 
of  all  shades  of  complexion.  For  example,  the 
Fula  people  found  in  West  and  Central  Africa 

30 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


31 


are  said  by  Sir  Harry  Johnston  to  have  hair 
which  is  neither  curly  nor  straight,  and  skin  no 
darker  than  a  gypsy's  or  a  Spaniard's. 

If  it  should  be  affirmed  that  Africa  is  the 
dumping  ground  for  all  the  languages  in  the 
universe  that  could  not  be  used  elsewhere, 
no  one  would  deny  it.  There  are  eight  hundred 
of  them,  including  dialects.  The  larger  part 
of  them  are  without  written  form.  This  makes 
the  work  of  the  missionary  most  difficult. 
It  also  reflects  great  credit  upon  him,  because 
he  has  found  his  way  out  by  supplying  them 
with  alphabetic  characters,  recording  and  trans- 
lating them.  One  language  will  be  spoken  by 
a  group  of  villages,  and  in  the  next  group  one 
entirely  different  will  be  used.  This  is  the 
universal  situation.  Along  the  West  Coast 
there  is  no  tongue  sufficiently  common  to  be 
used  as  a  medium  of  communication  for  trade 
purposes,  as  Arabic  is  employed  in  the  north. 

Methodism's  North  African  field  is  Moham- 
medan. The  rest,  excepting  Liberia's  western 
border,  is  pagan,  its  people  barbarous  —  except 
where  white  civilization  has  modified.  Our 
strategic  centers  are  located  in  vast  areas 
where  conditions  of  absolute  barbarism  prevail. 
True,  there  are  included  in  our  territory  cities 
of  varying  size,  which  represent  Anglo-Saxon 
civilization  of  a  high  type.  Out  from  these  and 
from    mission    stations    have    gone    influences 


.r-V-A.' 


jT3  ,  pS  US* 


32 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


which  make  for  the  uplift  of  the  blacks.  Wise 
governments  are  looking  to  their  improvement. 
But  aside  from  these,  Bishop  Hartzell  declares, 
and  taking  the  vast  area  as  a  whole,  the  heathen 
masses  are  yet  without  the  gospel. 


PRIMITIVE  PAGANISM 

Mohammedanism  may  be  defined  and  de- 
scribed because  it  is  a  religious  system,  with  a 
God  and  a  Book.  Paganism  has  neither  a  God 
nor  a  Book.  In  every  known  tribe  there  is 
said  to  be  a  belief  which  crudely  approaches 
a  hazy  conception  of  some  great  and  supreme 
Being.  This  God  is  not  a  deity  with  the  attribute 
of  love,  but  some  power  who  created  the  world 
long,  long  ago  and  then  went  away  forever. 
Miss  MacAllister  found  evidences  of  such  a 
belief  in  Liberia,  where  the  native  name  for 
God  was  "Niswa."  Doubtless,  however,  there 
are  as  many  names  for  him  as  there  are  lan- 
guages. 

Briefly,  the  religion  of  pagan  Africa  is  com- 
prehended in  one  thing  —  the  fear  of  evil 
spirits.  "Clinging  desperately  for  dear  life 
in  a  world  which  he  fancies  is  full  of  enemies, 
corporeal  and  spiritual,  he  is  daily  tortured 
with  suspicion  and  superstitious  fear." 

It  would  seem  that  every  visible  object  har- 
bors for  him  a  malignant  spirit,  waiting  a 
chance  to  destroy.    Worship  consists  of  placat- 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


33 


ing  these  for  fancied  offences,  or  securing  their 
favor  by  offerings.  The  offerings  usually  made 
are  practically  worthless  and  apparently  foolish. 
Bishop  Camphor  speaks  of  seeing  a  man  carry 
a  half  cup  of  rice  and  carefully  deposit  it  as 
a  sacrificial  offering  at  the  foot  of  a  cottonwood 
tree  forty-five  feet  in  circumference. 

Quite  different  was  the  attitude  of  a  little 
girl  from  the  mission  school  who  was  taken  to 
her  home  village  for  a  visit.  The  spirit  wor- 
shipped by  the  family  was  housed  in  a  hideous 
wooden  idol  and  kept  in  a  small  thatched  room. 
At  meal  time  each  member  of  the  family  threw 
into  this  room  a  handful  of  food  as  an  offering, 
and  the  mission  child  was  ordered  to  do  like- 
wise. At  first  she  refused  to  obey.  Later, 
when  threatened  with  punishment  by  having 
pepper  rubbed  into  her  eyes,  ears,  nose  and 
mouth,  she  consented.  She  afterward  explained 
her  apparent  apostasy  to  her  teacher  by  saying: 
"I  know  that  piece  of  wood  cannot  eat,  but 
the  ants  and  chickens  had  a  good  feast,  and  the 
dogs  that  strayed  that  way."  A  striking 
example  this  that  even  in  benighted  Africa, 
enlightenment  learned  through  love  "casteth 
out  fear." 

This  harrowing,  torturing  belief  of  the 
African  in  evil  spirits  extends  in  a  thousand 
directions.  It  influences  his  unconscious  as 
well  as  his  conscious  doings,  for  his  own  spirit 


34 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


in  its  wanderings  through  dreams  may  be 
bewitching  members  of  his  family  or  his  tribe, 
quite  unknown  to  himself!  For  this  offense, 
if  it  becomes  known,  he  will  be  held  to  strict 
accountability. 

He  dreads  the  spirits  of  the  earth,  the  sea 
and  the  air.  He  fears  a  dead  enemy  a  thousand 
times  more  than  one  who  lives.  He  can  with 
some  effort  protect  himself  against  the  latter, 
but  nothing  short  of  a  lifetime  will  suffice 
to  keep  clear  of  the  former. 


SPIRITS  OF  THE  DEAD 

In  his  belief  the  spirits  of  the  dead  return. 
They  come  back  to  linger  among  the  scenes 
and  about  the  dwellings  of  their  earthly  days. 
Not  infrequently,  when  accumulated  filth  makes 
a  village  uninhabitable  even  for  a  pagan  com- 
munity, it  is  burned,  the  tribe  locating  else- 
where. In  this  event  the  houses  of  people  who 
have  recently  died  are  left  standing  so  that 
returning,  homesick  spirits  may  find  a 
habitation. 

Offerings  of  various  kinds  are  made  to  the 
spirits  of  the  dead.  In  the  case  of  kings  and 
chieftains  this  often  involves  a  long  and  in- 
convenient journey  to  some  sacred  mountain 
cave  or  other  much  revered  spot.  Here  the 
spirits  are  supposed  to  dwell,  and  here  are 
performed  weird,   extended    ceremonies.    One 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


35 


such,   observed   by   Bishop   Camphor,  he   has 
described : 

"Powerful  and  numerous  fetishes  are  em- 
ployed, and  after  a  wearying  scene  of  senseless 
mutterings  and  uncanny  performances,  the 
devil-doctors,  standing  erect  with  faces  up- 
turned to  the  top  of  the  cave  and  speaking 
aloud  in  feeling  tones,  address  the  spirits  as 
follows,  one  of  their  number  holding  the  white 
fowl  brought  as  an  offering,  and  another  a 
plate  filled  with  rice  placed  near  the  mouth  of 
the  chicken:  'Spirits  of  our  kings  and  chief- 
tains, dwelling  in  the  cave  of  this  mountain, 
we  now  come  to  meet  you  this  day.  We  have 
left  our  towns  and  farms  behind,  and  have 
walked  this  long,  rough  way  with  our  wives 
and  our  children.  We  bring  you  this  peace 
offering  and  beg  you  in  the  name  of  our  king 
to  accept  it,  letting  us  know  the  state  of  your 
mind  by  making  this  fowl  peck  the  rice  we 
place  before  it.'  The  time  drags  wearily  on 
for  three  hours  with  no  response.  Then  there 
are  feverish  stirs  and  mutterings  followed  by 
loud,  pathetic,  importunate  cries,  pleading  with 
the  spirits  to  answer.  Women  whom  the  witch- 
doctors pressed  down  in  the  dark  recesses, 
claiming  that  they  are  by  nature  nearer  the 
underworld  than  men,  and  are  therefore  nearer 
the  spirits,  are  loud  in  their  cries.  Meanwhile 
there  was  long  waiting,  interspersed  with  more 


3d 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


violent  incantations  by  the  witch-doctors, 
mad  self-inflicted  flagellations  by  the  people, 
and  the  pleadings  of  the  old  king.  When  the 
fowl  finally  attacked  the  rice,  the  excitement 
of  the  crowd  was  beyond  description.  It  seemed 
as  though  the  cave  would  explode  under  the 
pressure  of  the  wild  and  furious  yells  in  which 
all  indulged." 

Such  is  prayer  and  such  is  worship  in  this 
land  of  midnight.  Bible  students  will  recognize 
at  once  the  similarity  between  these  pagan 
incantations  and  those  of  the  prophets  of  Baal 
at  Elijah's  test  on  Mt.  Carmel  when  they  cut 
themselves  after  their  manner  and  cried  aloud 
unto  their  god  till  the  going  down  of  the  sun. 


BELIEF  IN  REINCARNATION 

A  rude  sort  of  conception  of  reincarnation 
of  the  dead  is  held.  Miss  MacAllister  found 
this  belief  prevalent  in  Liberia,  where  to  pre- 
vent the  return  of  undesirable  spirits  they 
were  insulted  at  the  burial.  A  mother  of  three 
children,  all  of  whom  died,  became  the  mother 
of  twins  who  also  died.  Under  the  instructions 
of  the  devil-doctor,  it  was  believed  that  the 
same  spirit  had  thus  been  returning  time  after 
time.  The  twins  were  roughly  buried  in  one 
grave  and  several  shots  fired  into  it  to  prevent 
the  spirit's  return.  A  child  undesirable  because 
ailing  from  its  birth  lived  but  a  few  months. 


AM)  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


At  its  death  it  was  wrapped  in  a  coarse  mat  of 
reeds,  heavy  stones  were  rolled  upon  the  tiny 
body  and  its  spirit  was  told  never  to  return. 

With  such  infernal  forces  bent  upon  his  ruin 
it  is  small  wonder  that  self-preservation  is  the 
first  law  of  the  pagan  black  man.  Obviously, 
then,  he  must  find  some  friendly  shelter  which 
will  assist  him  in  giving  them  the  go-by,  thus 
saving  his  own  skin  and,  figuratively  speaking, 
that  also  of  his  family  and  estate. 

This  defense  he  finds  in  the  possession  of 
various  amulets  and  charms,  called  fetishes. 
They  are  not  worshipped  but  are  worn  or  dis- 
played, in  order  to  induce  spirit  protection. 
In  these  he  believes  they  take  up  their  abode. 
It  seems  that  there  is  some  discrimination  in 
taste  on  the  part  of  the  spirits  themselves.  To 
make  a  charm  effective,  great  care  must  be 
exercised  by  the  devotee  to  select  the  particular 
object  most  pleasing.  The  teeth  of  lions  and 
leopards  are  much  coveted  for  this  purpose, 
and  human  eyeballs  are  highly  valued,  even  to 
the  rifling  of  graves.  In  fact  almost  any  object 
that  can  be  named  or  upon  which  fancy  may 
be  fixed  may  become  a  fetish,  provided  only 
it  may  furnish  residence  for  some  supernatural 
power.  "A  chief  sees  how  many  bees  are  in  a 
bee  tree  and  how  they  multiply,  so  he  makes  a 
fetish  to  the  bees  in  order  that  his  own  town 
may  become  populous." 

/I |  iW  .Ml  3* 


38 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


In  St.  Paul's  day  there  were  those  who  got 
to  themselves  great  gain  by  the  making  of 
idols.  There  are,  generally  speaking,  few  real 
idols  worshipped  in  Africa,  so  the  market  in 
them  is  not  flourishing.  The  idol  maker's 
job,  however,  has  been  taken  over  by  the 
fetish-doctor  who  is  quite  as  sleek  a  rascal  as 
his  ancient  trade  predecessors  at  Ephesus. 
For  a  consideration  as  sizable  as  can  be  wrung 
from  the  trembling  victim  of  frightsome  fears, 
a  fetish  is  furnished.  If  it  fails  to  accomplish 
what  has  been  guaranteed,  or  goes  bad  after 
use,  back  to  the  doctor  it  is  taken,  to  be  tink- 
ered up  a  bit,  or  at  an  advanced  figure  a  new 
one  is  provided. 

In  a  very  literal  fashion  does  the  African 
believe  in  "Deadland."  Have  people  not  al- 
ways died?  In  his  thought  that  land,  like  his 
own,  is  full  of  strivings,  ambitions,  loves  and 
hatreds.  There  as  here,  according  to  him,  the 
majority  will  rule.  This  accounts  for  the  human 
sacrifices  formerly  and  doubtless  even  now 
accompanying  the  funeral  rites  of  king  or 
chief.  The  more  adherents  sent  with  him  the 
greater  his  influence  in  that  other  world. 
According  to  Crawford  the  horrible  custom  of 
burying  alive  the  wives  of  the  chief  with  his 
dead  body  still  exists.  Thus  would  it  seem 
that  the  abolished  suttee  of  India  is  outdone 
in  pagan  Africa. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


39 


The  African  knows  of  no  resurrection  from 
the  dead,  but  he  has  legends  relating  to  the 
end  of  the  world.  In  the  early  days  of  the 
Liberian  mission  the  school  children  said: 
"The  sea  gull  tries  to  drink  all  the  water  in 
the  sea,  the  sandpiper  to  count  every  grain  of 
sand  upon  the  shore,  the  woodpecker  to  chop 
down  every  tree.  When  they  finish  their  tasks 
all  at  the  same  time  then  the  sky  will  fall." 

CANNIBALISM  AND   WITCHCRAFT 

Bishop  Hartzell  assures  us  that  we  are  safe 
in  describing,  as  relevant  to  our  African  field, 
the  practice  and  customs  of  "lowest  barbarism." 
This  being  the  case,  some  reference  must  be 
made  to  cannibalism,  the  most  disgusting  and 
abhorrent  practice  in  all  the  pagan  world. 
The  cannibal  zone,  of  generous  proportions, 
includes  practically  the  whole  of  the  Congo 
basin.  A  portion  of  this  territory  our  church  y**m 
has  appropriated  as  hers  to  evangelize,  which 
makes  fitting  a  long-range  consideration  of 
the  subject. 

Careful  authorities  conclude  that  the  origin 
of  cannibalism  was  religious,  its  basis  being 
the  sacrificial  feast.  The  inhuman  practice 
still  flourishes  in  various  sections,  though 
governments  have  done  much  to  suppress  it. 
Bishop  Hartzell  states  that  one  of  his  minis- 
ters  in   Liberia,   while  making   a   tour   of   the 


40 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


interior,  told  him  of  seeing  two  black  men  tied 
out  in  the  bush  near  a  native  town.  They 
had  been  captured  in  war  and  were  waiting 
their  turn  to  be  eaten. 

Belief  in  witchcraft  is  universal.  Nowhere 
in  the  world  is  the  witch-spirit  population  so 
dense.  Its  members  are  not  limited  to  nocturnal 
flights  through  the  air  on  broomsticks.  In 
the  belief  of  the  African  they  are  actively  and 
diabolically  omnipresent,  ready  at  any  moment 
to  pounce  upon  him.  Events  of  whatever 
nature  are  never  explained  by  natural  causes. 
The  word  "accident"  is  not  to  be  found  in 
African  parlance.  Everything  is  caused  by 
spirit  influence,   and  that,   always  malignant. 

Persons  thought  to  have  undue  familiarity 
with  the  spirits  of  the  dead  are  believed  capable 
of  exercising  malign  and  destructive  powers. 
To  such  are  attributed  the  origin  of  misfortune, 
disease  and  death.  The  jurisprudence  of  native 
Africa  consists  largely  in  "smelling  out"  the 
witch.  This  gives  rise  to  various  ordeals  by 
which  such  persons  are  discovered,  chief  among 
them  being  that  of  the  sasswood,  or  the  poison- 
cup. 

Martha  Drummer,  who  as  an  evangelistic 
missionary  of  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary 
Society  in  Angola  has  frequently  encountered 
the  sasswood  test,  calls  it  the  "Supreme 
Court"   of   Africa.     So   long   has   the   custom 


zrS^ 


AND  AMONG  THE   KRAALS 


41 


been  in  vogue  that  its  hold  upon  the  people  is 
very  strong.  Even  the  converted  native  finds 
it  difficult  to  break  off  from  his  belief  in  it. 

The  sasswood  tree,  which  is  the  basis  of  the 
poison  potion,  is  considered  sacred.  In  its  bark 
inheres  the  influence  capable  of  correctly  and 
unerringly  locating  the  person  accused  of 
witchcraft.  The  bark  is  ground  and  steeped  in 
water,  the  people  are  called  together,  and  the 
"witch  palaver"  begins.  The  invitation  to 
attend  is  never  refused  as  that  would  be  to 
acknowledge  one's  self  guilty  —  so  the  whole 
village  turns  out. 

The  devil-doctor  is  master  of  ceremonies. 
In  hideous  guise,  with  unearthly  howls  and  often 
frothing  at  the  mouth,  he  tears  wildly  about 
among  the  terrified  crowd.  According  to  pre- 
arrangement,  or  chance,  he  "smells  out"  his 
victim,  professing  that  the  odor  of  blood  draws 
him  thither. 

The  sasswood  potion  is  drained  by  the 
accused.  If  innocent  he  survives  the  ordeal.  If 
guilty  his  death  from  the  poison  proves  past 
argument  that  sure  justice  was  meted  out  to 
him.  The  body  is  burned,  the  witch-doctor 
takes  his  fee  from  the  confiscated  property  of 
the  victim,  and  the  "witch  palaver"  is  over. 

"The  witch-doctor  himself  is  frequently  the 
one  to  suggest  that  witchcraft  has  been  prac- 
ticed.   Such  a  proceeding  is  profitable  in  dull 


42 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


times.  The  truth  is  that  owing  to  the  wide- 
spread belief  in  their  infallibility,  witch  trials 
have  long  since  become  a  gigantic  system  of 
blackmail."  It  is  estimated  that  annually 
four  millions  of  people  in  Africa  come  to  their 
end  in  the  effort  to  locate  witches.  This  num- 
ber probably  exceeds  that  of  deaths  caused  in 
the  same  length  of  time  by  war  and  disease  com- 
bined. 

THE  SIMPLE  LIFE 

The  simple  life  finds  full  expression  in  native 
African  existence.  To  provide  food  the  black 
man  need  scarcely  scratch  the  fertile  ground  to 
grow  a  crop.  Mary  Slessor  of  Calabar  had  to 
keep  constantly  fighting  back  the  tropical 
bush  around  her  mission  house  to  prevent  its 
being  veritably  swallowed  up.  The  African 
has  been  likened  to  Nature's  spoiled  child 
whom  she  feeds  almost  without  the  asking. 

His  hut  is  a  matter  of  small  account,  being 
but  a  combination  of  a  few  poles,  some  mud 
plaster  and  a  roof  of  thatch.  The  breaking  and 
cleaning  of  windows  does  not  bother  him,  for 
he  has  none.  His  door,  which  serves  for  both, 
is  so  low  he  must  stoop  to  enter.  The  pounded 
earth  is  quite  good  enough  for  a  floor,  and  the 
furniture  is  limited  in  quantity  and  simple  in 
design.  Sometimes  it  is  but  a  mat  of  reeds 
upon  which  to  lie,  or  there  may  be  a  bed  of 
bamboo  or  mud.    A  few  bamboo  stools,  a  few 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


43 


blocks  of  wood  for  pillows  and  the  furnishings, 
aside  from  cooking  utensils,  are  complete. 

Clothing  likewise  concerns  him  but  slightly, 
being  Mother  Nature's  ready-to-wear  gift, 
which  may  be  added  to  according  to  the  pros- 
perity or  state  of  civilization  of  the  wearer. 

The  Governor-General  of  North  Africa, 
being  asked  by  Alexander  Powell  what  he  con- 
sidered the  most  important  factors  in  the  re- 
markable spread  of  French  influence  there 
replied,  "Public  schools,  the  American  phono- 
graph and  the  American  sewing  machine." 
Evidently  the  benign  ministrations  of  the  latter 
have  not  been  limited  to  North  Africa,  as  the 
eminent  traveler  declares  he  has  also  seen 
one  stitching  the  garments  of  a  tribal  chieftain 
in  Central  Africa.  Thus  it  is  that  civilization 
sews  its  way  in. 

Anything  which  the  native  chooses  may  be 
utilized  for  money.  Cloth  is  a  prime  favorite 
everywhere.  Dr.  A.  L.  Piper  and  Mrs.  Piper, 
who  are  the  medical  missionaries  sent  out  to 
the  new  Congo  Mission  by  the  Epworth 
Leagues  of  Detroit,  find  that  in  their  field, 
whatever  else  may  be  used,  the  four  standard 
articles  for  buying  or  selling  are  cloth,  salt, 
beads  and  brass  wire.  In  some  sections  women 
may  use  in  barter  any  of  the  articles  mentioned, 
or  others,  except  cloth,  the  use  of  which,  as 
coin  of  the  realm,  is  reserved  strictly  for  men. 


*.VV 


44 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Kraals  are  simply  native  villages,  built 
probably  for  the  sake  of  safety  and  sociability 
around  an  open  space  of  more  or  less  ample 
proportions.  Community  matters  are  presided 
over  by  kings,  chiefs  or  head  men,  varying  in 
degrees  of  importance. 

Whatever  else  may  be  lacking  in  a  village, 
large  or  small,  that  thing  will  not  be  the  palaver- 
house.  This  building  amounts  to  a  community 
center,  and  is  by  all  odds  of  paramount  impor- 
tance. Ordinarily  there  is  a  large  pole  in  the 
center,  thirty  or  forty  feet  high,  and  the  conical- 
shaped  roof  is  thatched.  Of  hard-beaten  clay 
the  floor  is  somewhat  higher  than  the  surface 
of  the  ground.  For  seating  purposes  an 
embankment  possibly  two  feet  high  encircles 
the  outer  rim.  It  is  here  that  community  affairs 
are  thoroughly  aired,  discussed  and  settled  in 
long  and  exhaustive  sessions  called  palavers. 
Here,  in  state,  strangers  are  met  by  the  head 
men.  Here  the  ordeals  by  sasswood,  smoke, 
and  oil  are  sometimes  administered.  Disputes 
between  individuals  or  tribes  are  here  argued, 
and  more  than  once  since  the  coming  of  the 
missionary,  in  it,  before  church  and  school 
were  built,  "God  palaver"  (preaching)  has 
been  made,  and  little  children  gathered  about 
a  Christian  teacher. 

Again  has  a  background  been  sketched  in. 
All  of  the  conditions  here  referred  to  actually 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


45 


apply  over  the  territory  where  Methodist  mis- 
sionaries are  today  at  work.  To  reach  their 
various  fields,  and  upon  their  itineraries,  every 
sort  of  a  contrivance  for  locomotion  is  utilized. 
Bishop  Hartzell,  who  not  once  but  many  times 
has  covered  our  African  ground,  says  that 
travel  by  water  has  varied  from  the  greatest 
ocean  liners  to  native  canoes,  and  on  land  from 
the  finest  railroad  trains  to  hammocks  swung 
on  the  shoulders  of  natives,  or  to  ox-back  or 
going  on  foot.  Our  women  missionaries  have 
not  disdained  the  aid  of  donkeys,  and  a  bicycle 
with  mule-like  tendencies  has  been  tried  over 
the   roads   which   Dan   Crawford   calls    "goat 

walks." 

METHODISM'S  WEST  FRONT 

The  West  Coast  of  Africa,  one  of  the  principal 
locations  of  Methodist  work,  has  been  the 
possessor  of  a  bad  name  from  time  immemorial. 
The  ocean  has  been  in  league  with  the  climate, 
and  the  diseases,  and  the  slavers,  and  the  other 
agencies  which  set  themselves  long  ago  to  block 
its  portals.  The  terrific  surf,  battering  and 
booming  upon  reefs  of  rocks  which  demarcate  ^ 
the  entire  West  Coast,  has  put  an  effective  bar 
to  ships  that  would  come  pushing  their  prows 
toward  shore  to  nose  for  moorings,  that  white 
men  might  despoil  Africa  of  her  vast  treasure. 
An  African  chief,  whose  photograph  was  taken 
by  one   of  our    missionaries,   and   its   process 


Mfa 


<gffi&z 


46 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


explained  to  him,  enthusiastically  exclaimed, 
"White  man  he  know  everything  for  true.  He 
all  the  same  as  God."  Not  very  God-like 
were  those  who  for  generations  rifled  Africa's 
coasts.  They  carried  away  her  children,  her 
ivory  and  her  gold,  but  they  demonstrated 
that  the  genius  of  the  white  man  could  raze 
to  the  ground  even  such  colossal  defenses  as 
were  hers. 

Liberia  is  Methodism's  oldest  African  mis- 
sion. The  establishment  of  the  colony  was 
an  American  experiment.  Something  of  its 
early  history  has  been  suggested  elsewhere  in 
this  volume,  showing  that  Methodism  and  the 
new  Free  State  on  the  West  Coast  were  con- 
temporaneous. Real  Liberians  are  descended 
from  the  first  colonists  and  speak  the  English 
language,  which  is  the  national  language  of  the 
Black  Republic.  The  aborigines  of  the  country 
are  heathen  with  the  customs  and  ways  of 
living  which  are  more  or  less  universal  through- 
out Africa. 

The  early  missionaries  sent  out  by  our 
church  to  Liberia  were  fired  with  the  desire 

'  to  break  through  the  fixed  lines  of  their  work 
among  the  colonists.    Eleven  years  later  three 

1  preachers  were  stationed  back  in  the  interior. 

I  Headed  by  the  superintendent,  Dr.  John  Seys, 
who  gave  twenty-five  wonderful  years  to  Africa, 
this  party  of  itinerants  set  out  to  cut  their 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


47 


way  into  the  hinterland,  presumably  to  hunt 
for  their  stations ! 

The  upland  country  as  they  described  it  was 
delightful,  being  much  more  desirable  than  the 
flat  and  miasmatic  beach  land.  Dr.  Seys  wrote 
while  upon  the  journey:  "The  country  is 
increasingly  undulating,  with  little  streams  of 
cool  and  delightful  water,  a  luxury  of  incal- 
culable value  to  weary  foot-travelers  on  a  hot 
day  in  Africa."  Again,  "This  is  a  hilly,  well- 
timbered  country  with  as  good  water  as  I 
ever  drank.  There  are  hills  very  high  and  the 
streams  are  broad."  Then  there  were  "un- 
broken forests"  and  paths  that  were  "zigzag 
and  circuitous,"  and  others  overgrown  by  the 
wild  luxuriance  of  the  tropics. 

In  many  of  the  kraals  visited  by  this  party 
of  intrepid  Christian  pioneers,  no  white  man 
had  ever  before  been  seen.  The  people  were 
kind  and  curious.  The  kings  and  head  men 
cordially  welcomed  them.  King  Guzzama,  150 
miles  in  the  interior,  called  several  other  kings 
to  a  council  in  his  village,  to  make  palaver 
regarding  the  new  religion  which  had  been 
brought  by  the  white  men.  After  the  usual 
time,  doubtless,  which  is  required  for  coming 
to  conclusions  in  Africa,  the  kings  all  declared 
for  Christianity.  The  preachers  were  left  at 
the  most  promising  villages,  the  people  wel- 
coming them  with  loud  rejoicings. 


48 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


The  work  in  the  interior  of  Liberia  was  not 
continued  owing  to  lack  of  men  and  means 
and,  much  to  be  regretted,  has  never  been 
resumed.  In  his  quadrennial  report  to  the 
General  Conference  of  1916,  S.  Earl  Taylor, 
corresponding  secretary  of  the  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions,  stated:  "The  hinterland  of  Liberia 
opens  up  a  door  of  unusual  opportunity  for 
missionary  service  to  the  pagan  races  of  Africa. 
It  has  a  superior  climate  and  a  higher  type  of 
native  than  the  coast  land.  Mohammedanism 
is  breaking  over  Liberia's  frontiers.  Already 
one  native  tribe  has  been  Islamized.  The  door 
to  the  hinterland  should  be  opened  at  once." 


THE  IMPACT  OF  METHODISM 

The  character  of  the  work  of  our  church 
under  the  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  in  the 
exclusively  pagan  centers  —  Angola,  Belgian 
Congo,  Rhodesia  and  Portuguese  East  Africa  — 
is  similar.  Strong  centers  are  surrounded  by 
outstations,  the  latter  manned  in  most  instances 
by  native  pastor-teachers.  Church  services 
are  held  in  all  of  these,  while  the  missionaries, 
and  in  many  instances  the  young  men  and 
women  students,  push  out  into  distinctive 
heathen  kraals  to  preach  and  sing.  One  mis- 
sionary living  near  a  large  kraal  visits  it  every 
Sunday  afternoon,  holding  from  ten  to  a  dozen 
services  in  different  parts  of  it  every  time. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


49 


Heathen  customs  are  hard  to  break  away 
from  and  before  the  rite  of  baptism  is  admin- 
istered the  candidates  are  carefully  examined 
in  the  villages  where  they  live,  the  occasion 
being  made  much  of  by  the  people,  both 
Christian  and  heathen.  The  questions  asked 
cover  the  situation  regarding  their  break  with 
heathen  customs,  practice  and  beliefs,  the 
home  life  and  married  relation,  and  the  use 
of  tobacco  and  beer. 

The  candidate  must  also  give  satisfactory 
evidence  of  his  conversion;  his  knowledge  of 
God's  laws  and  those  of  the  church;  his  willing- 
ness to  follow  the  teachings  of  the  church  and 
make  contributions  toward  the  work  of  Chris- 
tianizing his  own  people.  All  this,  as  may 
be  imagined,  takes  time.  A  leaf  from  the 
journal  of  a  ditsrict  superintendent  describing 
one  such  examination  reads: 

"A  great  day.  We  continued  the  examination 
of  candidates  until  about  noon  and  then  spent 
some  time  examining  the  characters  of  evan- 
gelists, as  well  as  obtaining  reports  of  their 
work.  It  was  4.30  p.m.,  when  I  got  to  the 
sacraments,  and  baptized  103  adults  and  five 
infants.  Also  married  four  couples  and  admin- 
istered the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
to  about  two  hundred,  and  received  104  into 
the  church.  It  was  about  10  p.m.,  when  we 
finished  this  service  and  resumed  the  committee 


50 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Dj 

111 

IS 


i .. »> 


examination  of  workers.  So  much  remained 
to  be  done  that  it  was  three  o'clock  Monday 
morning  when  I  retired." 

The  change  wrought  by  Christianity  in 
the  character  of  the  native  African  is  well 
nigh  unbelievable.  It  makes  him  over  and  in 
a  very  real  way  he  becomes  a  new  man  in 
Christ  Jesus.  The  testimony  of  the  missionary 
upon  this  point  is  clear  and  unmistakable: 
"They  give  up  their  heathen  charms,  orna- 
ments and  rings,  and  they  stop  painting  and 
marking  their  bodies.  They  use  soap  and  clean 
up;  they  wear  more  clothes;  they  buy  tables 
and  chairs  and  serve  their  food  on  plates  and 
dishes."  They  show  signs  of  affection  for 
family  and  home.  They  stop  attending  heathen 
dances,  but  instead  they  congregate  in  services 
for  worship  and  sing  religious  songs. 

"As  Christianity  spreads  among  the  natives, 
so  does  the  desire  for  learning.  Impelled  by 
the  desire  to  learn  and  to  read  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  to  write,  large  numbers  attend  the 
schools  at  the  outstations.  Thirty-one  couples 
were  recently  married  according  to  the  Chris- 
tian ceremony."  Considering  the  depths  of 
the  pit  of  social  and  religious  degradation  from 
which  the  African  Christian  convert  is  digged, 
there  is  to  be  found  no  more  striking  expres- 
sion of  the  miracle  of  grace,  than  that  of  his 
regeneration. 


-*o-^*  *-• . 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


Suffering  among  the  people,  caused  by  the 
ravages  of  strong  drink  combined  with  disease, 
is  widespread  and  pitiful  in  the  extreme.  The 
results  of  bad  living  before  conversion  attend 
even  the  Christian,  and  are  the  heritage  of 
his  children.  Diseases  such  as  itch,  chicken- 
pox,  pneumonia,  diseased  eyes,  and  the  ever- 
increasing  tuberculosis,  are  common  and  make 
the  medical  missionary  indeed  a  Godsend.  A 
much  larger  number  of  medical  missionaries 
are  needed,  although  there  is  some  medical 
work  being  done  at  all  our  mission  centers. 


~5*. 


THE  REGIONS  BEYOND 

Not  content  with  the  usual  round  of  duties 
in  well-established  centers,  the  consuming  desire 
in  the  hearts  of  our  missionaries  is  to  push 
out  beyond  their  stations,  mostly  near  the 
coasts,  into  the  vast  regions  of  absolutely 
unrelieved  pagan  darkness.  "The  Regions  Jn$K  £"r Ij^ 
Beyond"  has  not  only  become  the  prime  /  ■.vs^«»«-.,»«*a 
objective  in  the  mind  or  the  missionaries,  but 
in  all  conferences  and  other  gatherings  of  our  ^§§|§t||s^l^ 
field  forces  it  is  the  topic  of  the  hour  in  prayer,  \  ^SSIHSf- 
in  conversation,  and  in  plans.  \  ^  . 

With   this   burning   desire   as   an   incentive, 
journeys    out   from   the   mission   stations   are 
constantly  being  made  by  the  workers.   Oppor- 
tunities seen  upon  such  trips  convince  them    a*,\^ 
that  only  the  inadequacy  of  forces  and  funds  //%> 

////,  "I,  \  \\\\ 


52 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


prevents  the  church  from  indefinitely  extending 
her  influence  upon  the  black-skinned  folk  who 
wait  to  welcome  her. 

With  the  thought  of  the  extension  in  mind,  a 
missionary  trek  of  fifteen  hundred  miles  was 
made  in  1907  by  Dr.  and  Mrs.  John  M.  Springer. 
Dr.  Springer  was  then  the  superintendent  of 
the  Old  Umtali  District  in  Rhodesia,  which 
as  he  says  bordered  upon  a  region  lying  between 
Angola  and  East  Africa,  "unentered,  untouched 
and  unassigned."  The  history  of  this  survey, 
with  its  events  and  experiences,  made  by  two 
Methodist  pioneers  through  the  very  land  of 
Livingstone,  as  recorded  in  Dr.  Springer's  book, 
"The  Heart  of  Central  Africa,"  is  fascinating 
and  informing. 

There  were  in  the  journey  happenings  which 
produced  all  the  thrills  pleasant  or  otherwise 
which  are  naturally  to  be  expected  in  a  story 
of  genuine  African  adventure.  There  were 
the  picturesque  if  somewhat  unruly  "carriers," 
the  sour  cassava  mush  as  diet,  the  blistered 
feet  of  the  travelers,  the  encounter  with  the 
dreaded  tsetse  fly,  the  strange  animals,  like  a 
zoological  garden  let  loose,  the  stranger  people 
in  their  filthy  kraals,  the  fresh  tracks  of  slavers, 
\t  the  mighty  rivers  and  superlative  scenery  — 
and  at  last  safely  out  of  it  all  and  at  Angola's 
front  door  in  time  to  take  ship  for  the  furlough 
home! 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


In  a  reference  to  the  territory  covered  by  the 
Springers  Bishop  Hartzell  says: 

"This  region  for  centuries  was  raided  by 
slave  traders,  but  now  the  tide  is  turned,  and 
the  descendants  of  former  slaves  are  returning 
from  the  east  and  west.  Among  them  are 
Christians,  young  men  ready  to  begin  the 
rebuilding  of  the  country  of  their  fathers  on 
Christian  principles.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Springer 
established  favorable  relations  with  the  govern- 
ment and  native  chiefs,  and  finally,  in  the  name 
of  our  Methodism,  they  claimed  for  future 
occupancy  territory  four  hundred  miles  square. 
Several  points  are  now  occupied;  buildings  are 
erected;  a  Biblical  training  school,  a  mission 
press  and  a  book  store  are  already  begun. 
The  Gospel  by  Luke  has  been  put  into  the  native 
language." 


CHAPTER  III 

Come  the  Methodists 

WITH  the  divine  fitness  of  things  which 
is  often  recognized  by  the  devout  and 
discerning  mind  in  the  orderings  of 
Providence,  it  was  a  negro,  ten  days  outbound 
from  New  York  to  Africa  on  the  more  or  less 
good  ship  "Elizabeth,"  in  the  year  1820,  who 
organized  according  to  the  approved  rules  of 
the  American  Church,  the  first  Methodist 
Episcopal  congregation  for  Africa,  our  first 
foreign  mission.  The  man's  name  was  Daniel 
Coker,  and  his  after  history  proves  that  he  so 
successfully  met  the  tests  for  endurance  and 
godly  character  in  the  new  field,  full  of  fears 
and  fevers,  that  none  who  came  after  him  could 
more  appropriately  have  borne  the  title  of 
Father  of  Methodism  in  Liberia. 


AFRICAN  PILGRIM  FATHERS 

This  was  no  gay  party  of  summer  tourists, 
with  little  red  guidebooks  which  conveyed 
information,  in  tabloid  form,  of  art  galleries 
and  ruins.  The  passengers  upon  the  "Eliza- 
beth" were  men  and  women  whose  faces  were 
black,  whose  lives  had  been  bitter,  yet  whose 
eager  eyes  looked  hopefully  beyond  the  wide 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


waste  of  Atlantic  waters  to  Africa,  the  land  of 
their  fathers,  and,  free  from  the  talons  of  the 
slave  trader,  soon  to  be  their  own.  Except  for 
a  difference  in  direction,  and  shade  of  complex- 
ion, they  suggest  somewhat  another  "band  of 
exiles"  who,  for  the  sake  of  home  and  freedom, 
voyaged  across  the  same  sea. 

Back  of  all  this  was  the  dark,  dreadful  his- 
tory of  the  slave  trade  on  Africa's  West  Coast, 
where  undreamed-of  horrors  seemed  to  emanate 
from  hell  itself.  Would  that  even  today  the 
chapter  in  American  history  which  records  her 
part  in  that  traffic  in  human  flesh  and  blood 
might  be  expunged!  But  as  early  as  1819  the 
leaven  which  was  eventually  to  leaven  the 
whole  lump  of  American  public  opinion  regard- 
ing slavery  had  begun  to  work. 

Indignant  at  the  boldness  of  the  abominable 
slavers  the  United  States  Congress,  backed  by 
President  Monroe,  who  it  seems  had  more  than 
one  "doctrine,"  passed  an  act  by  which  all 
Africans,  recaptured  from  the  slavers,  were  to 
be  restored  to  their  native  shores.  Having 
arrived  they  were  to  be  in  charge  of  the  govern- 
ment agents  of  the  United  States,  cooperating 
with  the  American  Colonization  Society  pre- 
viously organized. 

Such  was  the  objective  of  the  "Elizabeth" 
when  she  sailed  from  New  York  harbor  in 
1820,  but  tragic  the  ending  of  the  expedition. 


5(5 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


n 


kk. 


Except  the  embryo  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  which  developed  in  the  course  of  the 
journey,  but  little  of  the  colony  survived 
after  reaching  the  longed-for  shores.  The 
point  selected  for  the  site  of  the  proposed 
colony  proved  entirely  impossible.  "African 
fever"  has  been  spoken  with  bated  breath  by 
many  in  the  course  of  years.  And  it  was  this 
deadly  malady,  the  scourge  of  Africa's  West 
Coast,  which  like  an  enemy  unseen,  silent  but 
certain,  came  creeping  up  from  the  low  and 
sickly  soil,  ruthlessly  to  slay.  The  wretched 
little  colony  was  fever-swept,  and  soon  deserted 
by  the  survivors  —  those  who  had  crossed 
leagues  of  sea  for  freedom  and  home. 

It  was  in  these  days,  these  frightful  days  of 
fever  and  terror  and  death,  that  Daniel  Coker, 
the  negro  preacher,  won  his  spurs.  Sometime 
he  was  governor  of  the  little  colony.  There 
was  no  doctor  among  them,  except  as  this  man 
assumed  that  role.  Then  Daniel  Coker,  the 
governor,  the  doctor,  when  the  moaning  dis- 
tress of  the  fever-smitten  souls  was  heard, 
became  Daniel  Coker,  the  governor,  doctor, 
and  nurse.  When  death,  before  smiting,  hung 
poised  on  his  fevered  wings  above  lowly  dwell- 
ings, this  man  as  pastor  spoke  words  of  peace 
and  comfort  to  souls  in  their  passing,  and 
reverently  committed  their  bodies  to  lonely 
graves.  Though  in  later  years  noble  service  was 

a 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


rendered  for  God  and  the  church  in  Africa  by 
Daniel  Coker,  nothing  stands  out  with  more 
Christlike  radiance  than  his  devotion  to  the 
ill-fated  colony  at  Sherbro.  The  surviving  mem- 
bers of  that  first  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 
in  Africa,  fleeing  for  their  lives  to  Sierra  Leone, 
at  once  raised  crude  buildings  for  churches,  and 
among  them  Christian  worship  was  for  many 
years  maintained. 

So  ended,  not  the  first  African  adventure 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  as  such, 
for  the  church  neither  stood  sponsor  for  nor 
financially  backed  it.  It  was,  however,  the 
first  planting  of  Methodism  in  African  soil  by 
Methodises,  and  while  the  harvest  was  not 
abundant  who  shall  say  that  the  seed-sowing 
was  not  worthy? 

Methodism  has  had  an  honorable  record  in 
the  doing  of  "first  things"  in  her  church  and 
missionary  activities.  But  she  was  not  first 
of  the  denominational  bodies  of  the  United 
States  to  send  a  missionary  to  Liberia.  That 
distinction  belongs  to  the  Baptists  who,  seven  f^ggs 
years  before  Melville  B.  Cox,  Methodist,  set  -^ 
sail  from  Norfolk,  had  sent  out  Rev.  Calvin 
Holton  to  stake  a  claim  for  the  work  of  that 
church.  He  was  only  the  first  of  a  long  but 
noble  line  for  whom  there  awaited  in  the 
African  field  nothing  but  graves.  It  would 
seem  that  what  Gerald  Massey  says  of  human 


MM 


<sg&&* 


58 


under  the  crescent 


progress    in    general    is    true    also    of    African 
missions : 

"  We  climb  like  corals,  grave  on  grave, 
We  beat  a  pathway  sunward." 

The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  however, 
did  arrive  in  Africa.  Foreign  missionary  con- 
victions, among  Methodists  in  1824,  were  of 
an  exceedingly  pale  and  flabby  variety,  but  the 
General  Conference  of  that  year,  moved  pos- 
sibly by  the  example  of  their  Baptist  brethren, 
took  definite  action.  It  authorized  the  bishops, 
as  soon  as  sufficient  funds  were  in  hand  and  a 
man  found  willing  to  have  his  steamer  ticket 
read  "To  Africa,"  to  appoint  a  missionary  there. 

The  sum  total  of  Methodism's  budget  for 
all  missionary  purposes  at  that  time  being  less 
than  $7000  and,  interest  in  foreign  evangeliza- 
tion being  practically  nil,  it  is  not  a  matter 
of  surprise  that  definite  measures  for  Africa 
were  not  taken  sooner.  Up  to  this  time  not  a 
cent  of  money  was  spent  by  the  church  outside 
its  home  boundaries,  for  it  had  no  foreign  field. 

AN  IMPERISHABLE  SLOGAN 

Great  utterances  of  outstanding  characters 

have   come   down   to   the   present   generation 

'l   through    the    years    of    our    national    history. 

,'■'.    Such  historical  slogans  have  more  than  once 

(>   inspired  and  thrilled  with  new  courage  hearts 

I™     about  to  faint.    "Millions  for  defense,  but  not 


•t—'-mn    ,*— 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


59 


one  cent  for  tribute,"  flung  out  in  our  national 
halls  long  ago  against  the  pirate  outrages  on 
the  Barbary  Coast,  had  a  big  share  in  forever 
putting  to  an  end  the  operations  of  those 
marauders. 

"Let  a  thousand  fall,  before  Africa  be  given 
up,"  were  the  burning  words  of  a  man  with  a 
soul  aflame  for  the  release  of  a  race  from 
spiritual  bondage  of  the  deepest  dye.  They 
are  worthy  to  be  recorded  side  by  side  with 
those  expressing  the  loftiest  sentiments  which 
in  all  history  have  thrilled  and  stirred  to  action 
the  souls  of  men.  They  were  flung  out  as  a 
challenge  to  the  whole  church  of  Jesus  Christ, 
not  to  a  mere  denominational  segment  of  it, 
by  one  who,  by  all  the  tokens,  knew  intuitively 
that  he  himself  would  be  one  of  the  thousand 
that  should  fall  for  Africa.  The  man  was 
Melville  B.  Cox,  Methodism's  first  foreign 
missionary  to  Africa,  or  any  foreign  country. 


MELVILLE  B.  COX 

Thousands  of  people  in  the  church  today 
there  are  —  even  of  those  who  know  something 
of  missionary  service  —  who  many  times  have 
mouthed  the  words  of  Melville  B.  Cox,  think- 
ing little  of  their  import,  and  knowing  less  of 
their  author. 

In  view  of  what  is  known  of  his  short  but 
prodigious  career,  it  would  seem  that  no  his- 


60 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


torian  need  mention  that  he  was  made  of  stuff 
that  was  as  stern  as  that  of  which  his  New 
England  forbears  were  made.  Had  it  been 
possible  for  him  to  attend  a  certain  Boston 
Tea  Party  with  a  certain  military  ancestor,  we 
run  no  risk  in  assuming  that  he  would  undoubt- 
edly have  been  present. 

It  was  in  Hallowell,  Maine,  on  the  ninth  of 
November,  1799,  that  Melville  B.  Cox  entered 
a  family  circle  which  had  already  welcomed 
six  other  little  folks.  His  was  not  a  pampered 
childhood,  and  there  is  no  evidence  recorded 
as  to  a  gold  spoon  in  his  nursery  —  if  he  had 
a  nursery.  Families  in  straitened  circumstances 
and  with  seven  children  do  not  order  gold  spoons 
in  any  considerable  quantity. 

The  mother  of  the  Coxes  evidently  classes 
with  other  great  mothers  —  Susannah  Wesley, 
and  the  rest.  Her  name  was  Martha,  and  like 
another  Martha,  she  knew  well  what  it  was  to 
"serve."  Well  educated  for  a  girl  of  her  day, 
Mrs.  Cox  looked  to  the  religious  as  well  as  the 
intellectual  development  of  her  children.  Her 
training,  with  public  school  instruction  until 
he  was  ten,  ended  real  school  life  for  Melville 
Cox.  His  mother's  influence  was  perhaps  the 
strongest  human  force  in  his  life,  for  subse- 
quently his  brother  wrote,  "However  far  he 
might  be  from  home  and  loved  ones,  the  glance 
of  his  mother's  eye,  the  wave  of  her  hand  still 


AND  AMONG  THE    KRAALS 


61 


exercised  over  him,  under  the  blessing  of 
Heaven,  a  controlling  influence." 

The  glimpse  of  the  Cox  family  when  Mel- 
ville was  ten  is  pitiful  enough.  Off  somewhere 
in  the  West  Indies  the  father  was  dead.  The 
older  brothers  were  at  sea.  And  one  day  Mel- 
ville, when  he  was  ten,  kissed  his  mother,  his 
passionately  loved  twin  brother  and  his  little 
sisters  and  left  home  for  work  on  a  farm. 
About  once  a  year  afterward  until  he  was 
seventeen,  when  he  left  the  farm  for  a  book 
store,  did  he  see  the  home  folks.  Farm  work 
afforded  scanty  time  for  study,  except  at  night. 
Then,  Lincoln-like,  through  the  long  winter 
evenings  he  sprawled  before  the  open  fire  and 
dug  at  his  "figures."  The  change  from  farm  to 
book-selling  was  a  happy  one  —  and  he  eked 
out  his  scanty  learning  by  browsing  through 
the  volumes  on  the  shelves  until  he  had  ac- 
quired a  very  fair  sort  of  education. 

Mr.  Cox's  journal  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  his 
belief  in  conviction  for  sin  and  salvation 
through  Jesus  Christ.  It  also  states  that  with 
"unremitting  attention"  his  mother  "taught 
him  in  childhood  the  principles  of  the  Christian 
religion."  He  sums  up  his  own  case  in  a  letter 
to  Bishop  McKendree  in  1832  by  saying:  "In 
July,  1818,  God  for  Christ's  sake  forgave  my 
sins,  and  imparted  to  my  soul  peace  and  joy 
in  the  Holy  Ghost,  while  almost  from  the  depths 


62 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


1 


of  despair  I  was  pleading  for  mercy,  in  the 
woods." 

The  supreme  desire  of  his  life  to  see  the  sal- 
vation of  souls  was  kindled  in  Melville  B.  Cox 
when  he  himself  was  "born  again";  and  never 
in  the  brief  span  of  his  earthly  days  did  this 
all-absorbing,  and  in  his  case  all-consuming, 
passion  decrease  or  depart.  What  could  he  do 
but  preach? 

And  preach  he  did,  his  experiences  tallying 
with  those  of  many  other  Methodist  circuit 
riders,  who  in  those  days  were  weaving  into  the 
fabric  of  Methodism  the  principles  which  later 
were  to  make  it  great. 

He  himself  speaks  of  "lying  on  Something 
like  a  bed,"  on  a  cold  winter  night,  in  a  room 
through  whose  chinks  he  could  c6unt  the 
stars,  to  awake  in  the  morning  with  his  bed  half 
covered  with  snow.  Traveling  through  new  and 
unknown  settlements  with  night  upon  him, 
he  was  more  than  once  refused  shelter.  Mid- 
night often  found  him  still  trudging  along  a 
road  in  search  of  a  roof  to  cover  him.  His 
entire  financial  support  during  one  year  in  the 
early  days  of  his  ministry  was  ten  dollars. 

Small  wonder  that  his  health,  never  too 
robust,  suffered  under  the  strain  of  such  a  life. 
A  short  time  only  and  we  find  him  in  a  milder 
climate  in  an  effort  to  secure  strength.  Then 
came  the  struggle  against  odds  for  life  itself. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


6.'3 


Sorrows  crowded  upon  him;  the  first,  the 
passing  of  his  wife  —  almost  a  bride  —  and 
a  baby  daughter,  left  him  desolate.  Still  he 
battled  with  disease  and  still  he  preached. 
Often  entirely  prostrated  after  preaching,  he 
would  not  cease  to  try.  Through  it  all  his  super- 
lative ambition  to  be  instrumental  in  saving 
souls  never  diminished. 


HEARING  THE  CALL 

As  an  undercurrent  of  Cox's  life  there  ran 
apparently  the  idea  of  special  missionary  ser- 
vice. In  this  connection  let  us  not  overlook  the 
fact  that  it  was  he  who  first  thought  and  sug- 
gested that  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 
establish  missions  in  South  America. 

In  most  definite  language  he  stated  his  con- 
victions upon  this  point.  He  said:  "I  believe 
there  is  a  responsibility  resting  upon  American 
Christians  to  project  and  sustain  this  mission, 
which  rests  on  no  other  Christians  in  Christen- 
dom." Cox  proposed  such  a  mission  to  the 
bishops  and  spoke  in  its  behalf  on  the  floor  of 
the  sixth  General  Conference  of  the  church  in 
Philadelphia. 

THE  STORY  MOVES  TO  ITS  CLOSING 

Bishop  Hedding,  in  1832,  proposed  Africa 
to  Melville  Cox.  His  answer  was  prompt.  "If 
the  Lord  wills,  I  think  I  will  go."   His  appoint- 


G-l 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


ment  to  Liberia  followed  soon.  In  May,  1832, 
he  was  writing  to  his  brother,  "The  Episcopacy 
has  concluded  to  send  me  to  Liberia.  I  hail  it 
as  the  most  joyful  appointment  I  have  ever 
received  from  them." 

Farewells  —  eternal  farewells  —  were  said  to 
the  dear  mother,  now  bowed  with  age,  to  rela- 
tives and  friends,  and  Cox  left  the  old  home  at 
Hallowell  forever.  He  stopped  at  Wesleyan 
University  en  route  to  Baltimore.  There 
occurred  the  conversation  with  a  friend  which 
has  since  become  famous. 

"If  I  die  in  Africa,"  he  said  in  taking  leave, 
"you  must  come  and  write  my  epitaph."  "I 
will,"  said  his  friend,  "but  what  shall  I  write?" 
"Write,"  said  Mr.  Cox,  "let  a  thousand  fall 
before  Africa  be  given  up."  Never  spoke  a 
soul  more  sincere. 

The  voyage  by  which  Methodism's  first 
foreign  missionary  was  to  reach  his  African 
field  was  begun  when  on  November  6,  1832, 
the  ship  "Jupiter"  swung  off  and  out  from 
Norfolk,  and  took  her  way  eastward.  Four 
long  months  had  dragged  by  when,  on  March 
8,  after  many  vicissitudes  on  the  way,  he  wrote, 
"Thank  God,  I  am  now  at  Liberia." 

That  Cox  was  a  man  with  the  far  look  is 

demonstrated  by  the  plans  he  had  drawn  up 

for  the  development  of  the  work  in  Liberia, 

!'   even  before  he  had  set  his  foot  upon  its  shores. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


65 


That  his  ideas  were  reasonable  and  practicable 
is  proved  by  the  further  fact  that  very  many 
of  his  proposed  projects  have  since  been  adopted 
and  put  into  operation. 

The  martyr-spirit  possessed  him  thoroughly 
and  till  the  very  end.  It  was  well  that  he  could 
write  his  brother  he  would  prefer  to  be  an 
humble  missionary  in  Africa,  begging  his  bread 
from  kraal  to  kraal,  than  to  be  the  emperor  of 
its  millions.  His  living  quarters  were  far  from 
princely.  The  list  of  furnishings  in  his  house, 
through  which  when  it  rained  the  waters  ran 
in  tub-fulls,  was  a  table,  a  candlestick,  cups, 
saucers,  and  a  cot.  Because  of  the  high  prices 
of  meat  he  ate  none,  but  according  to  his  own 
word  his  rations,  morning,  noon  and  night, 
were  rice. 

Only  four  months  was  the  term  of  this  first 
Methodist  missionary  to  Africa,  then  he  was 
furloughed  to  fairer  shores.  But  in  this  brief 
time  he  wrought  broadly  and  well.  Probably 
his  most  enduring  and  important  accomplish- 
ment for  the  church  was  his  work  of  organiza- 
tion. He  gathered  together  the  fragments  of 
Methodism  consisting  of  a  chaotic  collection 
of  churches  and  preachers  and  brought  them 
into  firm  and  organic  disciplinary  union  with 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  in  America. 

His  outstanding  service  to  Africa  was,  by 
the  heroic,  deliberate  sacrifice  of  his  life,  turn- 


60 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


ing  upon  her  and  her  immeasurable  needs 
the  sympathetic  attention  of  the  Christian 
world.  Four  attacks  in  quick  succession  of  the 
dread  fever  which  has  cursed  Africa  for  ages 
—  and  on  July  21,  1833,  the  martyr  soul  of 
Melville  B.  Cox  went  to  its  crowning. 


THE  PIONEER  SUCCESSION 

No  attempt  can  here  be  made  to  give  entirely 
and  in  logical  order  the  history  of  Methodism's 
African  work.  Rather  it  is  the  purpose  to  focus 
once  more  the  eye  of  the  church  upon  the  heroic 
personalities  who  stood  for  God  and  humanity 
in  the  midst  of  gross  darkness  and  made  such 
history  possible. 

Before  Cox  set  sail  for  Liberia,  two  other 
young  ministers,  Rufus  Spaulding  and  Samuel 
Wright,  had  been  appointed  as  his  assistants. 
He  had  expected  them  to  go  with  him,  but  it 
was  not  until  after  he  had  fallen  that  these 
two  men,  Mr.  Wright  accompanied  by  his 
young  wife,  embarked  upon  the  same  ship, 
the  "Jupiter,"  which  had  carried  Cox,  and 
turned  their  faces  toward  Ethiopia's  out- 
stretched hands. 

Tucked  away  among  them  somewhere  was 
a  little  body,  known  as  Saphronia  Farrington, 
the  first  woman  to  be  sent  out  by  the  Method- 
ist Episcopal  church  as  a  missionary  to  a 
foreign  field. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


67 


Before  the  little  company  sailed  the  stagger- 
ing news  of  Cox's  death  had  reached  them, 
but  undaunted  in  the  face  of  the  tragedy,  and 
full  of  the  hope  of  youth  that  such  a  fate  could 
not  overtake  them,  they  started. 

After  a  voyage  of  fifty-six  days  they  arrived 
at  Monrovia  on  the  first  day  of  the  new  year, 
1834.  So  again,  after  being  six  months  without 
a  guiding  hand,  the  new  mission  was  equipped 
with  a  staff. 

Once  more  the  gaunt  arm  of  the  white  man's 
foe  —  the  fever  —  was  raised  to  descend  with 
fatal  blow,  and  in  two  short  months,  Rufus 
Spaulding  and  Saphronia  Farrington,  their 
own  veins  throbbing  with  fever,  were  alone  at 
the  station,  and  there  were  three  graves  instead 
of  one  in  the  little  cemetery. 

In  May,  Spaulding,  unable  longer  to  combat 
the  fever,  decided  to  return  to  the  States. 
Certain  that  Miss  Farrington's  remaining  in 
Liberia  would  cost  her  her  life,  he  repeatedly 
urged  her  to  return  also  —  once,  almost  with 
success.  But  again  in  the  history  of  the  world 
a  woman  stood  in  the  breach  in  a  time  of  grave 
crisis.  For  both  workers  to  have  returned  to 
America  would  have  meant  to  abandon  the 
mission,  and  for  this  Miss  Farrington  decided 
she  could  not  be  responsible.  Others  had  laid 
down  their  lives  for  Africa- — why  not  she? 

Fever-racked  and  alone,  then,  this  woman, 


JM 


68 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


the  sole  representative  of  the  Methodist  Church 
in  all  Africa,  lay  and  battled  for  life.  But  God 
needed  that  one  woman  to  hold  in  her  frail 
hands  the  remnant  of  his  work,  and  Saphronia 
Farrington  did  not  die. 

Her  testimony  of  her  almost  miraculous 
deliverance  from  the  clutch  of  the  fever  is 
sound  and  convincing.  It  suddenly  left  her  as 
she  prayed.  She  smiled  when  the  physician 
assured  her  that  he  had  never  in  all  his  experi- 
ence wrought  so  great  a  cure.  So  did  this  heroic 
woman  hold  Africa  for  Methodism.  Her  story 
should  not  be  forgotten. 


JOHN  SEYS 

It  needed  a  man  of  some  mental  poise,  as 
well  as  religion,  to  enter  the  environment  which 
faced  the  Rev.  John  Seys,  superintendent  of 
the  Liberian  work  after  Cox.  The  first  night 
after  he  arrived  at  Monrovia,  he  occupied  the 
mission  house  in  which  both  Cox  and  the 
Wrights  had  died  only  a  few  months  previously. 
He  was  entertained  during  the  evening  with 
minute  details  concerning  the  appalling  events 
which  had  taken  place  in  the  mission.  Later 
he  retired  to  the  same  room,  and  the  same  bed 
on  which  Cox  had  breathed  his  last!  He  after- 
ward referred  to  that  night,  declaring  that 
;;  what  saved  him  from  hours  of  sleeplessness  in 
!«#'""-"""yS^flJl-j'::l:    that  room  of  death  was  a  good  constitution 


AND   AMONG   THE  KRAALS 


69 


and  a  firm,  unshaken  trust  in  God.  Undoubtedly 
it  was  this  same  happy  combination  which 
enabled  Dr.  Seys  to  give  twenty-six  trying 
but  faithful  and  fruitful  years  of  service  to 
Africa. 

Tragic  enough  has  been  this  recital  of  suffer- 
ing and  death  —  the  toll  of  the  West  Coast  of 
Africa  for  its  own  redemption.  W.  T.  Stead 
spoke  the  truth  when  he  said  that  in  the  Dark 
Continent  the  frontier  had  advanced  on  step- 
ping stones  of  missionaries'  graves. 

In  those  early  days  precautionary  measures 
against  the  deadly  effects  of  climate  and  disease 
were  little  known.  Heroic  indeed  were  the  men 
and  women  who,  knowing  that  almost  certain 
death  awaited  them  there,  went  out  to  help 
save  Africa. 

The  call  to  African  missionary  service  which 
came  in  later  years  was  responded  to  by  men 
and  women  who,  however  willing  they  might     /^%.J/     % 
have  been  to  die  for  Africa,  much  preferred  to  *C„m.  W&  ' 
live    and   work   in   Africa.     They   went,   they 
prayed,  they  worked,  but  they  never  relaxed 
their  vigilance  in  health  matters.    These  pre- 
cautionary measures  have  so  radically  changed 
earlier   conditions   that   Bishop   Hartzell   now 
says  concerning  Africa  as  a  mission  field,  that  /yTlm     ._ 
there  should  end  forever  all  talk  of  its  being 
the    "missionaries'   graveyard"   or   a   "forlorn 
hope." 


\J8k 

v. 


'-*3&k 


70 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


ANN  WILKINS 

There  may  have  been  bank  notes  in  that 
collection  at  the  Sing  Sing  Camp  Meeting  one 
day  in  1836.  However,  another  kind  of  note 
was  drawn  from  out  the  coin  in  the  plate  by 
Dr.  Nathan  Bangs,  secretary  of  the  Missionary 
Society,  who  presided  upon  that  particular 
occasion.  It  was  a  note  by  means  of  which 
there  was  to  be  invested,  instead  of  money,  a 
life  for  Africa.  Dr.  Seys,  with  thrilling  words 
had  made  a  burning  appeal.  Ann  Wilkins  re- 
sponded by  dropping  into  the  plate  a  bit  of 
paper  on  which  was  written,  "A  sister  who 
has  but  little  money  at  command  gives  that 
little  cheerfully  and  is  willing  to  give  her  life 
as  a  female  teacher,  if  wanted." 

The  "  female  teacher  "  was  very  much  wanted. 
She  was  naturally  apprehensive  when  she 
thought  of  the  long,  hard  voyage;  she  feared  a 
possible  future  encounter  in  her  chosen  field 
with  "fearsome  savages  and  cannibals,"  never- 
theless Ann  Wilkins  was  at  last  in  Africa,  hav- 
ing sailed  in  1837. 

Then  came  days  when  in  one  school  and 
another  in  the  mission  this  quiet  but  forceful 
woman  gathered  around  her  the  children,  and 
taught  them.  Not  only  was  the  development 
of  their  minds  her  charge,  but  also  that  of  their 
souls  and  their  bodies.  The  custom  of  giving 
the  little  heathen  children  names  of  honored 


AND   AMONG   THE  KRAALS 


friends  in  America  —  one  which  is  still  some- 
what in  vogue  among  our  workers  in  Africa  — 
may  have  originated  with  this  ingenious  school- 
ma'am.  At  any  rate  it  is  amusing  to  read  of 
black  little  "Nathan  Bangs,"  "William  Mc- 
Kendree"  and  others.  Today  we  hear  of  the 
son  of  a  native  king  named  "William  Burt." 
Doubtless  there  are  sons  of  many  kings  and 
chiefs  who  proudly  wear  the  name  "Joseph 
Hartzell." 

Back  into  the  interior  went  the  children  of 
Ann  Wilkins's  schools.  They  carried  with  them 
the  news  that  their  people  in  the  kraals  were 
included  in  God's  plan  for  Africa.  Nor  was 
the  story  forgotten.  Many  years  later  an 
expedition  was  sent  out  to  settle  a  disputed 
boundary  between  British  and  Liberian  ter- 
ritory. In  the  course  of  the  journey  a  town  was 
entered  from  which  Mohammedan  mission- 
aries had  been  strictly  excluded.  Upon  the 
chaplain  of  the  party's  inquiring  the  reason 
for  the  extraordinary  circumstance  he  was  told 
that  young  people  of  the  kraal  had  gone  to 
Ann  Wilkins's  school  near  Monrovia,  where 
they  had  learned  to  read  her  Bible  and  love  her 
God.  "And  so,"  said  they  of  the  village,  "all 
these  years  we  have  waited  for  the  coming  of 
Ann  Wilkins's  God." 

For  twenty  years,  with  but  two  brief  fur- 
loughs,   did    this    good    woman    live    and    toil 


72 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


for  Africa.    She  returned  to  the  homeland  to 
be  loved  and  honored  by  the  whole  church. 

She  lies  at  rest  in  beautiful  Maple  Grove 
Cemetery,  Long  Island.  Over  her  grave  rises 
a  monument  erected  by  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society,  though  Mrs.  Wilkins  had 
finished  her  work  long  before  that  Society  was 
organized.  Upon  the  monument  is  this  inscrip- 
tion: "Here  lies  Ann  Wilkins,  a  missionary 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  to  Liberia 
from  1836  to  1856.  Died  November  13,  1857, 
aged  fifty-one  years.  Having  little  money  at 
command  she  gave  herself." 


A  LONE   WOMAN 

Agnes  MacAllister  of  Liberia  preceded  the 
Scotch  missionary,  Mary  Slessor  of  Calabar, 
to  Africa,  by  twelve  years.  She  answered  in 
1889  a  call  made  for  volunteers  by  William 
Taylor.  Tracing  the  almost  unbelievable  careers 
of  Agnes  MacAllister  and  Mary  Slessor, 
both  of  whom  pioneered  in  most  strenuous 
and  effective  fashion  among  the  lowest  pagan 
population  ever  spread  upon  this  fair  world, 
one  can  but  be  struck  with  the  similarity 
between  them  in  character  and  experience. 

Agnes  MacAllister,  even  in  girlhood  serious- 
minded  and  reflective,  was  called  "queer" 
by  her  gayer  friends.  When  she  announced 
her  intention  of  being  a  missionary  to  Africa, 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


78 


they  said  they  always  knew  she  would  do  some- 
thing impossible  like  that.  Her  family  was 
not  enthusiastic  over  the  project,  for  permitting 
her  to  go  to  Africa,  even  so  late  as  1888,  seemed 
like  burying  her  alive.   At  least  so  they  said. 

But  Agnes,  deep  in  her  own  heart,  knew  that 
she  must  go  to  Africa.  So  she  went. 

It  may  be  true  that  France  has  more  good 
harbors  on  Africa's  shores  than  all  the  other 
proprietors  of  the  country  put  together.  Very 
few  of  them  now,  and  less  of  them  in  '89,  were 
located  on  the  West  Coast,  bordered  by  reefs 
and  pounded  by  "a  ceaseless,  merciless  surf." 
Actually  getting  into  Africa  from  the  steamer 
by  becoming  a  passenger  in  a  dancing  surf- 
boat  is  evidently  not  an  experience  to  be 
coveted;  at  any  rate  it  made  sufficient  impres- 
sion upon  the  new  missionary  to  be  referred  to 
in  her  own  autobiography. 

The  first  station  to  which  Miss  MacAllister 
was  assigned  —  Garraway  —  was  a  good  twenty 
miles  up  the  beach.  This  again  necessitated 
the  requisition  of  the  uneasy  surfboat.  Behold 
then,  Miss  MacAllister  and  another  woman  mis- 
sionary, more  or  less  securely  packed  in,  sitting 
atop  their  boxes,  for  fear  they  would  topple 
overboard.  With  them  in  the  pack  were  Wil- 
liam Taylor  and  the  mission  carpenter.  The 
men  went  to  prop  up  the  old  shack  in  which  she  V  y 
was  to  live.    Probablv  the  aspect  of  perching    >iM 


74 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


I 


on  their  boxes  and  sculling  along  those  curling 
green  waves  in  an  open  boat  did  not  appeal 
to  them  as  in  the  least  humorous!  The  shack 
was  no  palace  for  a  queen  when  they  reached  it, 
but  Miss  MacAllister  began  at  once  to  "make 
things  do,"  as  missionaries  must,  even  to  this 
day  —  more's  the  shame. 

PIONEER  PEDAGOGY 

She  opened  her  school  the  day  after  she 
arrived  at  Garraway.  The  children  began  com- 
ing at  six  a.m.,  and  continued  in  relays  until 
night  when  she  sent  them  home  to  go  to  bed, 
the  only  way  she  could  get  rid  of  them.  Even 
then  they  reluctantly  "inched"  along,  whining, 
"We  want  to  learn  more  book."  When  later 
she  insisted  upon  having  the  children  with 
her  constantly,  fearing  the  undoing  of  her  work 
with  them  under  the  evil  influences  of  their 
homes,  her  school  decreased.  Finally,  to  her 
amazement,  a  witch-doctor  presented  to  her 
his  small  son  for  keeps,  saying,  "Take  this  boy 
and  teach  him  sense  proper."  She  not  only 
accepted  her  lively  gift  but,  making  him  a 
white  suit  of  cotton  cloth,  she  took  him  by  the 
hand  and  boldly  fared  forth  through  the  kraal, 
so  that  all  who  cared  might  see.  The  whole 
community,  agog  with  curiosity,  certainly  cared 
and  to  a  definite  end.  Before  the  week  passed 
nine  more  little  black  boys  were  handed  over 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


bodily,  and  Agnes  MacAllister  began  to  have 
her  hands  full.  After  that  she  was  never  with- 
out her  black  children  around  her,  following 
each  one  of  them,  as  for  one  reason  or  another 
they  left  her,  with  a  mother's  interest. 

Besides  "proper  book  sense,"  however,  this 
American  girl  had  many  and  more  difficult 
matters  to  teach.  One  was  proper  farm  methods. 
For  this  purpose  she  not  only  established  a 
large  farm,  but  worked  it.  She  planted  vege- 
tables herself,  besides  setting  out  five  hundred 
coffee  trees. 

Teaching  the  pickaninnies  as  well  as  real 
folks  to  wear  clothes  was  decidedly  more 
difficult.  The  women  looked  at  Miss  Mac- 
Allister's  American  clothes  contemptuously. 
They  said,  "Them  close  be  no  we-fashion," 
and  at  first  would  have  none  of  them.  A  good 
supply  of  jewelry  was  to  their  minds  clothing 
enough.  Very  slowly  was  a  change  of  opinion 
brought  about,  but  once  the  strange  style 
was  set,  all  of  feminine  Garraway  wanted 
clothes  and  wanted  them  instanter.  None 
knew  how  to  sew,  therefore  Agnes  must  herself 
do  much  of  it.  A  reciprocity  arrangement 
solved  the  question,  she  cutting  and  sewing 
while  the  Garraway  ladies  worked  the  farm. 

During  her  term  at  Garraway,  there  were  a 
number  of  terrible  and  bloody  tribal  wars. 
During  these   Miss   MacAllister   assumed   the 


76 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


role  of  surgeon  and  nurse,  although  she  had 
shrunk  always,  as  she  herself  acknowledged, 
from  anything  of  the  kind.  One  instance  will 
suffice  to  prove  that  her  surgical  work  was 
both  thorough  and  effective.  In  one  of  the 
bloody  clashes  between  tribes,  a  head  man 
was  deeply  slashed  across  his  face,  and  it  was 
feared  that  he  was  dying.  Miss  MacAllister, 
whose  only  surgical  supplies  were  scissors, 
bandages,  sticking-plaster,  arnica,  and  needle 
and  thread,  was  summoned  and  went  to  the 
injured  man.  Her  treatment  was  simple  enough. 
Cleansing  the  wound  thoroughly,  she  sewed  it 
carefully  together  with  her  needle  and  thread, 
and  applied  arnica!  Many  such  instances 
might  be  related  showing  her  stout  heart  and 
splendid  courage,  through  these  awful  days 
when  she  did  little  but  care  for  wounded 
warriors. 


IN  LABORS  MORE  ABUNDANT 

A  catalogue  of  her  deeds  cannot  be  here 
recorded.  She,  with  two  of  her  boys,  traveled 
on  her  itineraries  up  the  river,  often  climbing 
out  to  pull  the  canoe  over  fallen  trees,  while 
a  deluge  of  rain  soaked  her.   Once,  in  the  house 

',  of  a  native  king  to  whom  she  went  to  preach, 
she  slept  on  a  bed  of  boards  four  feet  long, 
with  the  king's  greasy  old  coat  for  a  pillow  — 

Lf  for  which  was  substituted  later  a  stick  of  wood. 

L 


AND  AMONG  THE   KRAALS 


77 


There  was  a  fire  in  the  room,  but  no  windows; 
the  mosquitoes  were  ferocious ;  the  fowls  roosted 
in  the  corners,  and  she  spent  much  of  the  night 
driving  away  the  rats.  Surely  a  combination 
hard  to  be  outdone!  She  broke  up  a  sasswood 
ordeal  more  than  once;  defied  and  exposed 
the  devil-doctors;  fought  the  importation  of 
rum  by  which  the  natives  were  crazed;  and 
capped  the  climax  by  taking  her  twenty-nine 
children  down  to  the  mission  headquarters 
miles  away  so  they  could  see  a  real  Christmas 
celebration. 

God  bless  the  memory  of  Agnes  MacAllister! 

She  was  no  masculine  monstrosity.  She 
accomplished  her  prodigious  labors  by  the  help 
of  Him  who  said,  "My  grace  is  sufficient  — 
I  will  not  leave  thee."  When  entirely  alone 
at  the  station  she  wrote:  "Many  a  time  as  it 
grew  dark,  I  would  go  down  the  hillside  to 
some  quiet  spot,  tell  Jesus  all  about  it,  have  a 
good  cry,  and  come  back  to  take  up  the  duties 
of  mother  and  teacher  to  the  children,  preacher 
and  missionary  to  the  people,  doctor  to  the 
sick,  and  superintendent  of  the  work  in  general." 


A  HERO  ROLL 

The  stories  here  set  down  are  but  a  few  which 
might  be  told.  Other  heroic  men  and  women 
in  the  past  have  consecrated  their  lives  to 
Africa,  and  rendered  noble  service  in  her  behalf. 


78 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Today  we  have  more  missionaries  in  Africa 
than  ever  before.  Nobly  are  they  sustaining 
the  traditions  and  standards  of  the  past,  and 
with  improved  yet  still  much  limited  facilities, 
they  are  pushing  forward  with  ever-increasing 
success. 

Not  even  a  few  recorded  fragments  of  the 
history  of  Methodist  Missions  in  Africa,  such 
as  these,  would  be  complete  without  mention 
of  one  of  the  most  strikingly  picturesque  per- 
sonalities that  ever  crossed  our  missionary 
horizon  —  Bishop  William  Taylor.  Though 
his  dream  of  self-supporting  missions  in  Africa 
was  a  rosy  one,  it  was  but  a  dream.  He  fought 
a  losing  fight.  But  his  efforts  were  sincere, 
and  by  them,  and  not  by  results,  let  him  be 
judged. 

In  a  day  when  Africa  was  not  a  favorite 
subject  in  Methodist  missionary  circles,  and 
general  depression  in  regard  to  the  outcome  of 
the  work  there  was  in  the  heart  of  the  church, 
William  Taylor  never  lowered  the  flag.  By  his 
own  heroic  effort,  Africa  was  once  more  pushed 
into  the  line  of  nations  waiting  to  receive  from 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  the  Gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  there,  measurably  because 
of  him,  she  stands  today. 

Those  who  were  at  the  General  Conference 
at  Cleveland  in  1896,  saw  one  day  a  picture 
which  can  never  be  forgotten.      It  was  when 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


the  tall,  spare  form  of  Bishop  Taylor,  the 
veteran  of  many  years  and  many  lands, 
towered  above  the  kneeling  figure  of  Joseph  C. 
Hartzell,  the  newly  elected  bishop  for  Africa, 
with  hands  laid  reverently  upon  his  head  in 
blessing. 

One,  after  the  long  day's  march,  had  laid 
down  the  burden  which  the  other,  with  strong 
heart  and  steady  hand,  was  to  take  up. 

The  load  was  lifted,  and  Dr.  Hartzell  began 
his  career  as  Missionary  Bishop  for  Africa  — 
a  career  which  through  twenty  years  brought 
nothing  but  honor  to  the  church.  It  was  no 
easy  way  he  trekked.  He  found  Methodism 
in  fragments,  stations  undermanned,  and  the 
best  of  them  poorly  equipped.  Such  schools 
as  existed  were  loosely  organized,  and  debts 
were  legion.  Surely  a  Herculean  task  had  been 
assigned  him.  But  his  heart  was  hopeful  and 
his  grip  was  strong,  and  today  so  far  as  Method- 
ism is  concerned,  as  the  result  of  his  adminis- 
tration, Africa  has  more  nearly  come  to  her 
own  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  our 
missions  there. 

Six  stations,  once  hereinbefore  named,  are 
firmly  established  —  Liberia,  our  oldest  mis- 
sion, Angola  where  our  territory  extends  several 
hundred  miles  into  the  interior,  the  Belgian 
Congo,  Rhodesia,  Portuguese  East  Africa,  and 
North  Africa. 


■ 


J& 


80 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


4 

m 

B 
% 


u 


Bishop  Hartzell's  quadrennial  report  in  1916 
says  of  these  stations:  "The  Methodist  Episco- 
pal Church  now  has  six  mission  fields  in  Africa. 
Although  widely  separated,  every  one  of  them 
can  be  reached  by  steamship  or  railway  more 
easily  than  Asbury  could  visit  his  line  of 
conferences  on  horseback  from  western  Ken- 
tucky to  New  England.  They  are  divided  into 
one  annual  conference,  four  mission  conferences 
and  one  mission."  Previous  to  1914  these 
stations  were  located  in  various  sections  con- 
trolled by  five  different  powers. 

A  most  strategic  move  was  that  by  which 
Bishop  Hartzell  established  personal  relations 
between  himself  and  a  number  of  the  European 
rulers  of  these  territories.  In  the  instance  of 
a  certain  grave  crisis  the  foreign  minister  in 
one  European  capital  informed  an  American 
minister  that  any  missions  under  his  flag  in 
Africa,  with  which  Bishop  Hartzell  was  con- 
nected, need  have  no  fear  of  trouble. 

A  matter  of  great  gratification  has  been  the 
recognition  by  both  Algeria  and  Tunisia  of 
our  church  as  a  legal  body.  This  will  greatly 
smooth  the  way  for  the  operations  of  our 
missions,  and  will  permit  us  to  hold  legal 
title  to  property.  Bishop  Hartzell  says: 
"These  are  very  great  concessions,  and  we 
are  the  first  foreign  religious  body  to  be  so 
recognized." 


-«a-~3*   —.  . 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


81 


THEN  AND  NOW 

What  Bishop  Hartzell  found,  twenty  years 
ago  was:  The  Liberia  Annual  Conference; 
some  remnants  of  Bishop  Taylor's  work  in 
Angola;  a  group  of  heroic  missionaries  and 
some  property,  two  small  stations  on  the  Congo, 
soon  abandoned;  four  small  beginnings  in 
East  Africa;  twelve  foreign  missionaries;  ninety- 
five  native  preachers  and  teachers;  four 
thousand  church  members;  forty -nine  Sunday 
schools  with  three  thousand  enrolled ;  one  semin- 
ary; a  few  private  schools,  and  church  property 
amounting  to  $75,000. 

What  he  left  in  1916  was:  The  Liberia 
Annual  Conference;  four  mission  conferences; 
one  mission  with  six  organized  centers;  ninety- 
five  missionaries;  400  native  preachers  and 
teachers;  17,000  church  members  with  hosts  of 
adherents;  271  Sunday  schools  with  14,709 
enrolled;  10,000  students  enrolled  in  our  schools 
and  church  property  valued  at  $500,000. 

At  the  General  Conference  of  1916,  Dr.  Eben 
S.  Johnson  was  elected  Missionary  Bishop  for 
Africa,  to  succeed  Bishop  Hartzell.  At  the 
same  conference  Dr.  Alexander  P.  Camphor  was 
elected  Missionary  Bishop  for  Liberia,  to  suc- 
ceed Bishop  Isaiah  B.  Scott. 


NOTE:  Our  missions   in   the   Madeira   Islands   are   usually 
grouped  with  those  of  Africa.     They  are   omitted   here   as    this  '  ,!!t 
study  pertains  only  to  the  continent  of  Africa. 


Ufa 


jre* 


CHAPTER  IV 


Woman  Under  the  Crescent 


TWO  forces  in  Africa  contend  for  the 
souls  of  its  womankind.  One  is  the 
blighting,  withering  power  of  Moham- 
med; the  other  is  the  demon-rife  faith  of  her 
pagan  fathers.  With  both  of  these  forces  the 
workers  of  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary 
Society  are  coming  in  constant  contact.  Into 
the  struggle  they  are  infusing  another  element, 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  whose  scheme 
of  salvation  there  is  a  place  for  woman;  by  his 
power,  strong,  pure  and  sweet  she  may  rise  to 
this  place. 

Taking  Bishop  Hartzell's  estimate  of  thirty 
millions  as  the  population  of  Methodist  ter- 
ritory in  Africa,  there  are  probably  not  less  than 
ten  millions  of  women  above  the  age  of  sixteen 
years,  the  very  tragedy  of  whose  existence, 
whether  under  the  crescent  of  the  Prophet, 
or  enslaved  by  the  crude  fetishes  of  paganism, 
makes  to  the  women  of  Methodism  its  mute 
appeal. 

As  yet  the  efforts  of  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society  in  their  behalf  are  so  slight 
as  to  be  almost  negligible.  As  the  first  pale 
streak  of  dawn  to  a  glorious  sunrise,  as  the 
strain  of  a  muted  violin  to  the  sublime  sym- 

82 


^L- 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


83 


phony,  so  almost  inconsiderable  is  the  contact 
of  this  great  organization  with  the  lives  of  the 
women  in  this  vastest,  neediest  field  in  all  the 
world.  A  complete  muster  of  our  forces  under 
the  Woman's  Society,  as  officially  given  in 
the  reports  of  1916,  shows  that  the  work  is  but 
at  the  stage  of  beginnings.  The  centers  of 
operation  are  three  —  North  Africa,  Angola 
and  Rhodesia,  at  which  points  there  are  twelve 
missionaries  and  two  Bible  women.  Out  from 
these,  among  women  and  girls  in  homes  and 
harems,  countryside,  kraals  and  crowded  cities, 
go  our  missionaries  to  pursue  their  divine  quest 
for  souls. 

Such  institutions  as  we  number,  a  possible 
five,  are  conducted  as  home  schools.  Religious 
instruction  and  moral  culture  are  of  the  first 
account,  though  obstinate  Moslem  prejudice 
and  gross  pagan  practices  are  formidable  ob- 
stacles to  much-longed-for  results.  Books  are 
dipped  into,  and  laundry  tubs  as  well.  In  a 
word,  education  is  accompanied  by  such  in- 
dustrial arts  and  home-craft  as  will  insure 
cleanliness  and  attractiveness  in  the  homes 
over  which  some  day  our  girls  will  intelligently 
preside  as  wives  and  mothers. 


THE  OVERHANGING  CRESCENT 

Above  North  Africa  the  crescent  hangs  high 
In  its  dim,  uncertain  ray  grope  the  millions  of 


..iV,......^"\>'- 


84 


ITNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


Arab  and  Kabyle  women  to  whom  Method- 
ism's daughters  have  a  difficult  but  blessed 
mission  —  difficult,  because  nowhere  is  Moslem 
bigotry  more  galling  —  blessed,  because  even 
here  may  be  known  freedom  in  Christ  Jesus. 

Readers  of  these  pages  there  will  be  whose 
eyes  have  seen,  possibly  with  disguised  admira- 
tion, the  silent,  white-draped  forms  of  the 
women  of  old  Algiers  moving  through  the 
streets  of  the  native  town.  A  fascinating  mys- 
tery may  envelop  them  as  do  their  veils,  their 
beauty  and  their  graces  may  be  sung  by  Mos- 
lem bards,  but  their  lives  are  as  dark  and 
tortuous  as  the  streets  they  tread,  their  place 
upon  the  lowest  social  level  is  forever  fixed. 

That  woman  is  vastly  inferior  to  man  is 
the  general  opinion  held  by  the  masculine  por- 
tion of  the  entire  non-Christian  world.  This  is 
especially  emphasized  by  laws  and  customs 
which  had  their  origin  under  the  green  turban 
and  in  the  daily  life  of  the  Prophet  of  Mecca. 
Small  wonder  that  in  Mohammedan  lands 
there  runs  the  proverb  —  that  sure  index  to 
public  sentiment  —  "The  threshold  of  the  house 
weeps  forty  days  when  a  girl  is  born."  It 
neglects  to  add  that  the  girl  weeps  all  the  rest 
of  her  life. 

This  attitude  of  the  masculine  Mohammedan 
toward  his  women  does  not  crystallize  solely 
in  a  passing  word  or  sneer.   It  works  itself  out 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


85 


into  the  tragedies  of  living  death,  and  not 
infrequently  into  actual  death  itself. 

A  traveler  stopping  overnight  in  the  Kabyle 
mountains  of  North  Africa  was  standing  with 
his  host  upon  a  dizzy  height,  when  an  old 
woman  who  was  picking  up  bits  of  wood  near  by 
slipped  over  a  precipice  and  went  crashing  to 
her  death  on  the  rocks  below.  The  horror- 
stricken  Englishman  observed  that  his  host, 
far  from  being  agitated  over  the  occurrence, 
was  as  calm  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  merely 
remarking,  "It  was  nothing  but  a  woman  and 
anyway,  being  old,  her  time  had  come." 

In  all  our  North  African  work  among  women 
the  absolute  despotism  of  the  Mohammedan 
head  of  the  house  must  be  reckoned  with. 
The  inwrought  ideas  of  the  inferiority  of  things 
feminine  among  Mohammedan  men  relegate 
their  women  to  a  condition  of  spineless  nonentity 
which  does  not  depreciate  their  value  as  toys, 
drudges,  and  slaves  to  every  masculine  whim, 
caprice  or  base  desire. 

All  this  has  its  deadening  effect  upon  the 
intellect,  conscience  and  will  of  the  wretched 
Moslem  woman,  whose  life  of  hopeless  oppres- 
sion has  left  in  her  no  desire  for  better  things. 
Our  Algiers  missionaries  constantly  confront 
this  serious  difficulty,  and  Miss  Welch  writes: 

"Our  Moslem  mothers  are  a  sad  problem. 
Brought    up    in    the    darkness  —  moral    and 


,m 


j^-'-Jli1 


8(5 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


111 


spiritual  —  of  Mohammedanism,  they  seem  to 
have  no  desire  to  rise  higher,  and  sadder  still, 
they  are  content  to  see  their  girls  pass  along 
the  same  way.  They  maintain  that  what  was 
good  enough  for  them  is  good  enough  for  their 
children,  and  often  we  see  bitter  jealousy  when 
the  girl  does,  seemingly,  succeed  where  the 
mother  has  failed.  The  Moslem  man  still 
holds  womanhood  under  his  heel,  and  he  has 
no  intention  of  relieving  the  pressure.  Two  of 
the  women  want  to  be  baptized,  but  the  desire 
has  ever  been  quenched  by  the  men  of  their 
families.  The  women  look  at  us  with  lifeless 
eyes  and  say,  'I  cannot  understand  why  I 
am  not  baptized;  but  I  can't  be.'  Are  they 
drugged  until  their  will  is  destroyed?  Is  it 
innate  fatalism,  or  is  it  the  iron  heel  that  holds 
them  in  bondage?" 

Miss  Emily  Smith,  our  first  missionary  in 
North  Africa,  writes  in  much  the  same  strain : 

"The  work  among  Moslem  women  has  gone 
well.  I  wish  we  could  write  of  baptisms,  but 
that  day  is  not  yet,  nor  can  it  come  until  we 
have  a  work  formed  among  men.  The  man 
rules  here  and  he  must  be  won  if  the  woman  is 
to  take  an  open  stand  for  Christ.  Still,  many 
of  our  poor  Moslem  sisters  believe  on  and  love 
the  Lord  Jesus.  The  love  of  Christ  has  won 
hearts  which  had  never  really  known  what 
love  means." 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


87 


WOMAN'S  MANY  BONDS 

Many  are  the  specific  and  concrete  forms 
by  means  of  which  this  diabolical  prejudice 
against  women  expresses  itself.  In  fact  the 
fatal  blot  upon  Islam,  wherever  found,  is  its 
unspeakable  degradation  of  women,  bodily, 
mentally,   spiritually.    Robert  E.   Speer  says: 

"The  very  chapter  in  the  Mohammedan 
Bible  which  deals  with  the  legal  status  of 
woman,  and  which  provides  that  every  Moham- 
medan may  have  four  legal  wives  and  as  many 
concubines  or  slave  girls  as  his  right  hand  can 
hold,  goes  by  the  title  of  'The  Cow.'  One 
could  get  no  better  title  to  describe  the  status 
of  woman  through  the  non-Christian  world." 

Raymund  Lull,  the  first  missionary  to  the 
Moslems,  went  none  too  far  when  in  his  bold 
attack  upon  Mohammed  he  accused  him  of 
being  "destitute  of  the  seven  cardinal  virtues, 
and  guilty  of  the  seven  deadly  sins."  Seventy 
times  seven  could  not  cover  the  number  of  sins 
against  Mohammedan  women  for  which  the 
Prophet  must  be  indicted  before  the  world  and 
pronounced  "guilty." 

At  the  head  of  the  Moslem  woman's  black 
list  of  woes  stands  her  bodily  degradation. 
This  matter  of  many  ramifications  is  one  with 
which  our  workers  must  constantly  deal,  and 
over  which  they  have  the  least  control.  One 
of  Mohammed's  own  guilty  and  disgusting  love 


88 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


affairs  is  responsible  for  the  veiling  and  seclu- 
sion of  women  in  Moslem  lands.  Her  veil, 
should  her  exacting  lord  or  the  caprice  of  an 
impossible  mother-in-law  permit  her  to  go 
upon  the  street,  is  no  cobweb  of  lace  to  keep 
my  lady's  soft  skin  from  possible  tan.  The 
veil  in  which  the  woman  of  Algiers  swathes 
herself  is  of  coarse  white  cotton  cloth.  This 
is  drawn  up  over  chin  and  nose  to  the  eyes, 
forming  a  slit  for  them  by  meeting  the  edge 
of  the  head  drapery  drawn  down  from  above. 
The  arrangement  is  suffocating  so  that  breath- 
ing is  difficult.  In  Constantine  the  women 
are  draped  similarly  but  in  black,  a  most 
hideous  and  uncanny  costume. 

The  sight  of  a  beautiful  young  girl  of  fifteen 
as  she  appeared  at  a  children's  class  at  the 
mission  house  in  Algiers,  with  olive-tinted 
skin,  white  teeth,  laughing  brown  eyes  —  and 
then,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  secluded  and 
unsexed  in  her  garb  for  the  street, —  gave  the 
writer  a  shock  forever  to  be  remembered. 

Probably  one-half  of  the  whole  population 
of  the  Moslem  world  is  female.  The  rules  of 
veiling,  and  of  seclusion  in  their  houses,  more 
or  less  strictly  observed,  apply  to  all  of  them. 

Undoubtedly  there  are  Moslem  homes  in 
the  great  cities  of  North  Africa  —  Algiers,  Con- 
stantine and  Tunis  —  where  the  material  com- 
forts of  life,  even  its  luxuries,  are  to  be  found, 


7" 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


89 


and  where  secluded  women,  bejeweled  and  silken 
clad,  walk  upon  priceless  rugs  and  order  about 
their  slaves.  But  who  cares  to  serve  a  life 
imprisonment  even  in  a  palace?  The  bars  may 
be  of  gold,  but  it  is  a  hideous  certainty  that 
they  are  bars.  Even  these,  they  tell  us  — 
creatures  like  all  women  of  social  bent,  and  who 
love  their  kind  —  droop  and  wither  under 
such  a  system.  More  than  one  missionary  who 
has  won  her  way  into  the  heart  of  some  North 
African  harem  will  tell  you  that  in  a  whispered 
confidence  she  has  been  told  how  tired  the 
women  are  of  idleness  and  how  they  hate  the 
monotony. 

Although  our  missionaries  have  entrance  into 
some  homes  of  wealth,  by  far  the  largest  num- 
ber they  reach  are  in  wretched  native  houses. 
Any  number  of  families  may  be  huddled  into 
one  of  them.  The  windowless  walls  are  street- 
ward ;  the  series  of  rooms,  one  or  more  of  which 
may  constitute  the  dwelling  place  of  a  large 
family,  face  a  filthy  court  whose  only  redeeming 
feature  is  the  patch  of  blue  sky  above  it  —  the 
one  thing  uncontaminated  by  the  indescribable 
foulness.  Sanitary  measures  are  unheard  of 
and  undreamed  of.  This  results  in  practices 
which  cannot  be  described  in  decent  hearing 
or  set  forth  in  black  and  white. 

It  is  gratifying  to  note  that  the  house  in  the 
native  town  in  Algiers,  where  Miss  Smith  and 


90 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


Miss  Welch  have  their  classes  for  Moslem 
women,  has  recently  been  thoroughly  renovated 
and  whitewashed,  while  a  weeding  out  of  some 
of  the  surplus  population  has  resulted  in  more 
decent  housing  for  the  tenants,  and  a  safer 
place  for  missionaries  to  work. 

In  such  habitations  as  these  are  thousands 
of  women  in  Algiers  and  other  North  African 
cities  secluded,  imprisoned.  No  fragrance  from 
the  wonderful  gardens  reaches  them,  no  cool 
breath  from  the  sea.  They  have  no  work  to 
do  in  their  hovels  destitute  of  furniture.  They 
cannot  read.  Lucky  for  them  if  the  day  brings 
with  it  food  with  which  to  stave  off  actual 
hunger.  What  is  left  for  them  but  to  brawl  in 
the  courtyard,  to  retail  current  scandal,  or 
to  pass  on  from  mother  to  child  the  vile  tales 
which  have  filtered  down  to  them  through 
hundreds  of  years  of  obscene  Mohammedan 
literature? 

So  early  are  they  secluded  —  "hidden"  as 
they  truthfully  say  —  that  many  a  woman, 
under  the  stifling  regime  of  this  living  death, 
has  not  even  a  faint  recollection  of  God's  out- 
of-doors.  A  missionary  tells  of  a  woman  whom 
she  has  visited,  who  had  never  once  since  her 
marriage,  forty  years  before,  been  outside  the 
walls  of  her  home.  She  pitifully  implored  her 
visitor  to  tell  her  something  about  the  growing 
flowers,  saying,  as  well  she  might,  "Ah,  you  are 


Dah'btia 


AND  AMONG  THE   KRAALS 


91 


happy  women,  free  to  go  here  and  there  and 
enjoy  life!" 

THE  TOLL  OF  DEATH 

Wasting  diseases  and  the  terrible  ravages  of 
tuberculosis  do  their  deadly  work  among  these 
Moslem  women.  The  inalienable  right  of  every 
creature  of  God's  hand  to  physical  exercise  and 
fresh,  life-giving  air  has  been  denied  them. 
Annually,  in  consequence,  death  levies  a  heavy 
toll,  and  thousands  of  them  needlessly  sink 
into  early  graves,  leaving  to  their  children  a 
woeful  heritage. 

No  better  or  sadder  proof  of  this  do  Method- 
ist women  need  than  that  of  the  death  from 
tuberculosis  of  Dah'byia,  the  first  baptized 
convert  in  the  work  of  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society  in  North  Africa.  Her 
blood  was  tainted  by  that  of  the  frail,  plague- 
scourged  generations  of  women  before  her,  and 
at  eighteen  this  brilliant,  beautiful  life,  rich  in 
promise  of  service  among  her  own  people, 
ceased  upon  earth  to  bear  its  fruitage  in  heaven. 
The  hearts  of  our  workers  were  wrung  with 
grief.  For  her  own  sake  they  had  loved  the 
child  —  for  Christ's  sake  they  had  trained  her 
for  his  service.  Of  Dah'byia,  her  brief  life  and 
triumphant  passing,  Miss  Welch  writes: 

"She  was  only  four  years  old  when  we  found 
her  living  with  her  father  in  a  dark  recess  under 


JM 


uH^fx  m 


92 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


A 

rii) 

Hi 

;.'  1 


the  staircase  of  an  Arab  house.  It  was  so  dark 
that  we  sent  the  child's  brother  to  buy  a  candle 
which  we  lighted  before  we  could  discern  the 
faces  of  the  inhabitants  of  that  miserable  hole. 
When  we  did,  it  was  to  see  a  woman  lying  ill 
with  smallpox  on  the  floor.  She,  with  her  baby 
and  the  sick  father,  was  thankful  indeed  for 
the  simple  medicine  and  food  which  we  were 
able  to  give.  We  visited  them  a  few  times, 
and  then  Dah'byia  one  day  declared  her 
intention  of  coming  to  live  with  us  'forever.' 
When  we  left  without  her,  she  ran  down  the 
street  crying,  'I  want  to  come  and  live  with 
you-u-u.' 

"A  few  weeks  later  she  had  her  desire.  Her 
stepmother  came  to  our  house  to  bid  us  fare- 
well, as  she  and  two  children  were  going  back 
to  the  mountains.  On  rising  to  go,  Dah'byia, 
a  tiny  little  bunch,  was  found  crowded  into  an 
impossible  space  in  the  corner  under  my  bed. 
She  said  she  meant  'to  live  with  the  disciples 
of  Jesus  Christ  all  her  life,' —  and  she  did. 
She  was  ever  a  perfectly  pure  and  a  very  intel- 
ligent little  soul,  though  hot-tempered.  She 
was  often  caught  lying  and  stealing  —  a  difficult 
child  enough  to  lead,  until  her  conversion, 
which  occurred  when  she  was  eleven  years  old. 
We  were  often  in  despair  lest  we  should  never 
make  of  her  a  vessel  meet  for  the  Master's  use. 

"After  her  conversion  it  was  all  different. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


9J5 


'I  have  given  myself  to  the  Lord  Jesus  tonight 
and  he  has  written  my  name  in  his  Book  and 
washed   me   from    my   sins,   Lala    Dora,'    she 
said  to  me  as  she  came  out  of  the  meeting  that 
night.    Having  suffered  much,  I  replied,   'By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them,  my  daughter.' 
Poor  little  girl !  She  inherited  from  her  Moslem 
parents  nothing  but  things  contrary  to  what 
is  best,  and  perhaps  it  was  only  when  she  was 
dying  that  I  realized  how  great  had  been  the 
fight,  and  how  real.     'I  have  tried  to  follow 
him,  but  how  I  have  had  to  fight  against  my 
temptations  God  alone  knows,'  she  said  often 
to  me  during  the  last  days.    The  testimony  of 
all  who  saw  her  during  those  last  weeks  was, 
'How  gentle  she  is!'   Those  of  us  who  watched 
her,   prayed   that  faith   like   to   hers   may   be 
granted  to  us  when  we  stand  in  our  turn  waiting 
at  the  gate.    Only  the  day  before  she  left  us 
a  girl  said  to  her,  'I  wish  I  YvTere  in  your  place, 
Dah'byia,  but  I  must   stay  and  gain   heaven 
first.'  Suddenly  the  big  brown  eyes  opened  and 
in  a  clear,  earnest  voice  Dah'byia  said,   'Oh, 
how  often  must  I  tell  you  that  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  shed   his   blood   on   Calvary?    Heaven 
is  yours!    If  you  will  but  ask  him  you  have 
nothing  to  do  but  take  the  forgiveness  he  offers 
you  and  to  follow  him.   What  should  I  do  now 
with  all  my  sins  as  I  wait  at  the  gate  if  I  did 
not  know  that  Jesus  has  forgiven  all  —  all?' 


94 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


"And   so 
years'   love 
seventeen, 
baptized  — 


she   left   us,    our   child   of   twelve 

and   training  —  left  us   when   but 

How    we   rejoiced    when    she    was 

when  she  brought  us  her  Certificat 


d 'Etude  —  when,  through  Miss  Smith's  ever 
patient,  never  wavering,  careful  training,  she 
learned  such  subjects  as  comparative  religions, 
three  languages,  native  cooking,  needlework, 
lace  work,  and  much  besides,  which  we  fondly 
believed  was  preparing  her  for  her  life  among 
her  own  people.  But  —  '  she  had  seen  the  face 
of  Jesus,'  and  'he  who  has  once  seen  his  face, 
can  never  be  content  on  earth  again. 

Today  comes  to  the  author's  desk  from 
Algiers  a  letter  which  says: 

"You  remember  Dah'byia,  the  Moslem  child 
who  came  to  us  when  four  years  old,  and  who 
died  in  her  eighteenth  year?  Only  yesterday 
a  poor  Spanish  woman  met  me  in  the  town  and 
told  me  she  had  sat  with  Dah'byia  in  the 
hospital  while  she  was  so  ill.  She  said,  'Her 
love  for  Christ  and  her  testimony  to  him  did 
more  for  me  than  I  can  ever  tell  you.'  Dah 'byia 
has  been  with  Christ  for  over  six  years  now.  She 
rests,  but  her  works  do  follow.  They  are  worth 
saving,  those  little  Mohammedan  girls!" 

Does  not  some  one  who  reads,  hear  the  same 
divine  call  which  sent  Emily  Smith  and  Dora 
Welch  to  North  Africa  to  save  Dah  'byia  — 
and  the  women  of  her  race? 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


95 


MANY  STRIPES 

The  brutal  infliction  of  bodily  injury  upon 
women  by  beating  or  otherwise  has  been  the 
order  of  Islam  ever  since  the  Prophet  himself 
permitted  his  victorious  soldiers  to  do  as  they 
pleased  with  the  women  they  chanced  to  meet 
in  the  course  of  their  bloody  conquests. 

The  Koran  not  only  permits  wife-beating, 
but  the  method  of  its  application  and  the 
limitations  are  therein  distinctly  set  forth. 
Mohammedan  men  have  always  taken  full 
advantage  of  the  license  granted,  and  accord- 
ingly have  Mohammedan  women  suffered. 
For  any  reason,  or  no  reason,  may  a  woman  be 
so  punished. 

E.  Alexander  Powell,  of  the  American  con- 
sular service  in  Egypt,  relates  an  incident  in 
this  connection  which  needs  no  comment: 

"A  wealthy  Arab  from  the  interior  of  Oran, 
starting  on  a  journey  to  the  capital  of  that 
province,  bade  the  wife  whom  he  adored  an 
affectionate  goodbye.  Returning  several  days 
before  he  was  expected,  he  seized  the  smiling 
woman  who  rushed  to  greet  him,  tied  her  hands, 
and  dragging  her  into  the  street  gave  her  a 
furious  beating  in  the  presence  of  the  astounded 
neighbors.  No,  she  had  not  been  unfaithful  to 
him,  he  said,  between  the  blows,  nor  had  she 
been  unkind.  He  not  only  was  not  tired  of  her, 
so   he   assured  the   onlookers,  but   she  was    a 


-."  "''''X" 

m~ 


96 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


veritable  jewel  of  a  wife.  Finally,  when  his 
arm  grew  tired  and  he  stopped  to  take  breath, 
he  explained  that  passing  through  a  street  in 
Oran,  he  had  seen  a  crowd  following  a  man 
who  was  being  dragged  along  by  the  gendarmes. 
Upon  inquiry  he  learned  that  he  was  being  taken 
to  prison  for  beating  his  wife.  Therefore  he 
had  ridden  home  at  top  speed,  without  even 
waiting  to  complete  his  business,  that  he  might 
prove  to  himself,  to  his  wife,  and  to  the  neigh- 
bors, that  he,  at  least,  was  still  master  in  his 
own  house,  and  could  beat  his  wife  when  he 
chose." 

Oran  is  in  North  Africa  —  so  are  Algiers  and 
Tunis! 

"Woman's    rights"    in    North    Africa    will 

require  little  space  for  description.     They  are 

simply    to    render    to    her    husband    absolute 

and    unquestioning    obedience.      Marriage    is 

founded  largely  upon  sensuality,  rarely  upon 

affection,     and     the     arrangement    practically 

shackles  the  wife  with  the  chains  of  life-long 

slavery. 

HIDDEN  LIVES 

It  is  this  sort  of  woman  whose  sad,  despair- 
ing, unintelligent  eyes,  set  deep  in  her  pallid 
face,  haunt  you  after  you  have  made  the  rounds 
with  a  missionary  in  Algiers.  So  she  lives,  this 
woman,  far  removed  from  where  the  currents 
of  real  life  flow  —  to  stagnate  mentally,  morally 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


97 


and  physically,  and  to  be  tragically  old  long  be- 
fore her  time. 

Her  one  hilarious  diversion  is  indulged  in 
when  on  a  Friday,  the  Moslem  prayer  day, 
she  may,  with  other  ghosts  of  women  like  her- 
self, take  her  veiled  way  to  the  cemetery. 
This  excursion  is  the  exclusive  outing  for  many 
of  the  women  of  Algerian  coast  towns,  and  of 
it  one  writer  observes: 

"You  can  see  them  for  yourself  any  Friday 
afternoon  if  you  will  loiter  about  the  white- 
washed gateway  to  the  cemetery  of  Bou- 
Kabrin,  on  the  hill  above  Algiers,  for  they 
believe  that  on  that  day  —  the  Moslem  Sab- 
bath —  the  spirits  of  the  dead  revisit  the 
earth;  hence  their  weekly  pilgrimage  to  the 
cemetery  to  keep  them  company.  When  the 
sun  begins  to  sink  behind  the  Atlas,  these 
white-veiled  pyramids  of  femininity  reluctantly 
begin  to  make  their  way  back  through  the 
narrow,  winding  lanes  of  the  native  city,  dis- 
appearing one  by  one  through  doors  which 
will  not  open  for  them  until  another  Friday 
has  rolled  around.  Picture  such  a  life,  my 
friends:  six  days  a  week  encloistered  behind 
jealously  guarded  doors  and  on  the  seventh 
taking  an  outing  in  a  cemetery!" 

Occasionally  an  Algerian  woman  may  see 
through  some  chink  in  her  wall  of  seclusion  — 
some  lattice  window,  perhaps  —  a  man  other 


98 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


than  her  husband.  Certainly  no  man  —  in 
some  cases  not  even  her  father  or  brother  — 
may  see  her  except  by  the  permission  of  her 
husband. 

A  secluded  woman  must  be  very  ill  indeed 
before  a  physician  will  be  summoned.  Under 
such  circumstances,  in  some  localities,  great 
preparations  are  made,  the  unfortunate 
patient,  in  case  her  pulse  must  be  felt,  being 
almost  suffocated  with  bed  clothes  in  the 
effort  to  hide  all  of  her  except  a  bit  of  her  wrist. 

This  well-authenticated  story  hails  from 
Tunis.  The  favorite  wife  of  a  wealthy  Arab 
merchant  being  ill,  the  French  physician  was 
called.  While  he  pursued  professional  inquiries 
which  would  make  his  diagnosis  of  some  value 
in  treating  the  patient,  the  careful  husband 
stood  behind  him  with  the  muzzle  of  a  revolver 
pressed  into  the  small  of  his  back! 


i 


POLYGAMY,   CHILD   MARRIAGE  AND   DIVORCE 

Millions  of  Mohammedan  women  have  be- 
come party  of  the  fourth  part  in  the  marriage 
matter,  for  the  Prophet  of  Mecca  generously 
provided  for  a  possible  quartet  of  wives  in 
every  family.  His  own  harem,  by  special 
revelation  and  permission,  numbered  twelve. 
They  tell  us  that  the  younger  and  more  pro- 
gressive generation  of  his  followers,  many  of 
them  educated  in  France,  are  ashamed  of  the 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


99 


abominable  system.  They  argue  that  the 
Prophet  permitted  four  wives  per  man  only  in 
case  he  could  love  them  equally  and  treat  them 
impartially.  The  fact  that  this  is  obviously 
impossible,  they  aver,  makes  such  permission 
null  and  void. 

But  the  clock  which  may  sometime  strike 
the  hour  of  doom  for  polygamy  has  not  yet 
been  wound,  and  women,  victims  of  its  fright- 
ful consequences,  still  suffer  wherever  Islam 
holds  them  in  its  grip.  Isabella  Bird  Bishop 
suggests  in  a  vivid  fashion  the  partial  out- 
growth of  such  a  diabolical  system  when  she 
says: 

"The  intellect  is  dwarfed,  while  all  the  worst 
passions  of  human  nature  are  stimulated  and 
developed  in  a  fearful  degree;  jealousy,  envy, 
murderous  hate,  intrigue  running  to  such  an 
extent  that  in  some  countries  I  have  hardly 
ever  been  in  a  woman's  house,  or  near  a  woman's 
tent  without  being  asked  for  drugs  with  which 
to  disfigure  the  favorite  wife,  to  take  away 
her  life,  or  to  take  away  the  life  of  the  favorite 
wife's  infant  son.  This  request  has  been  made  •> 
to  me  over  two  hundred  times." 

As  soon  as  death  had  relaxed  Khadijah's 
restraining  hand  upon  Mohammed,  and  he 
had  plunged  into  a  veritable  debauch  of  marry- 
ing, his  favorite  wife,  it  is  said,  was  a  child  of 
nine  when  she  was  added  to  his  harem.    From 


100 


UNDER   THE  CRESCENT 


that  day,  child  marriage  in  Moslem  lands  has 
been  the  fiendish  fashion. 

Our  missionaries  in  Algiers  know  but  too 
well  what  this  horrible  and  inhuman  custom 
means,  as  demonstrated  in  the  lives  of  the 
Moslem  girls  in  their  classes  in  the  native  town. 
In  the  plasticity  of  childhood  they  are  intel- 
lectually as  responsive  as  other  children.  Some 
are  keen  almost  to  uncanniness.  Who  under 
similar  circumstances  could  have  given  a  better 
answer  to  one  of  our  missionaries  than  a  little 
Moslem  girl?  Having  been  naughty  just  at 
Christmas  time,  she  was  asked:  "Why  do 
you  sadden  the  dear  Lord  Jesus  just  at  the 
time  of  his  birthday?"  Looking  quickly  up 
the  child  replied:  "Lala  Emily,  it's  just  like 
the  girl  (Eve)  who  took  the  fruit.  The  devil 
tempted  her  and  she  took  it  and  ate  it.  Well, 
I  am  naughty.  I  don't  know  why !" 

All  too  soon  are  the  sweet  young  faces  missed 
from  the  girls'  classes  and  the  missionary  must 
write  in  her  journal:  "They  leave  us  young, 
often  at  the  age  of  eleven  or  twelve,  when  they 
are  shut  up  preparatory  to  marriage." 

Only  a  few  hours  in  the  week  for  so  pitifully 
short  a  time,  then  the  heavy  door  of  seclusion 
swings  shut  and  the  Moslem  girl  is  indeed 
"hidden."  Yet  the  ideals  which  she  carries  into 
her  new  home  and  the  love  of  the  Master  which 
unseen  enters  with  her,  make  a  sweeter,  more 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


101 


wholesome  dwelling.  "Even  their  Moslem 
husbands  respect  them  more,"  is  the  comment 
of  the  missionaries. 

And  as  if  all  this  were  not  enough  to  fill  to 
overflowing  the  Moslem  woman's  cup  of  woe, 
into  this  marital  muddle  enters  another  factor 
to  make  her  misery  doubly  miserable  —  divorce. 
Forever  it  hangs  over  her  head;  forever  she 
fears  it;  forever  she  will  suffer  all  things  at  the 
hands  of  her  husband  to  avoid  it. 

In  the  Methodist  sphere  of  Moslem  missions 
along  the  Mediterranean,  as  throughout  the 
Moslem  world,  severing  the  marriage  bond  is 
but  a  slight  operation,  done  with  much  facility 
and  little  publicity.  It  is  simply  a  matter  of 
repudiation  of  the  wife  by  the  husband.  Pos- 
sibly he  has  grown  tired  of  her  —  of  her  looks, 
of  her  temper.  Possibly  he  simply  wishes  to 
fill  her  place  with  another,  and  so  he  tells  her 
to  go,  and  she  goes.  If  she  has  children  they 
are  left  behind  to  the  doubtful  mercies  of  other 
wives  who  may  succeed  her.  Time  after  time 
she  may  be  remarried  and  divorced,  falling  a 
degree  in  the  social  scale  with  each  succeeding 
marriage.  No  wonder,  if  despised  and  abused, 
that  she  is  likely  to  die  of  old  age  at  forty. 


A  WOMAN'S  ESTIMATE 

No  true  or  adequate  estimate  can  be  made  of 
the  measure  of  woe  which  is  the  portion  of 


10S 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


Moslem  womanhood.  Possibly  no  more  con- 
vincing final  word  can  be  said  than  that  of  one 
of  them  who  spoke  from  her  heart  to  a  mis- 
sionary, the  incident  being  related  by  Dr.  H. 
K.  Kumm.  Quite  a  little  crowd  of  women  were 
seated  around  her  as  she  sat  in  the  house  of  a 
rich  Bey,  reading  to  them  out  of  the  Scriptures. 
Suddenly  the  chief  wife  stood  up:  "What  is 
that  to  us?  We  are  only  women!  Why  do  you 
not  go  to  the  men  with  this  religion,  this  teach- 
ing, this  book?  There  is  no  Paradise  for  us. 
We  are  like  cattle;  when  we  die  we  are  gone. 
We  have  no  souls."  Dr.  Kumm  adds:  "The 
very  idea  that  they  are  human  beings  has  been 
driven  out  of  them.  And  these  are  our  sisters !" 

Can  anything  be  done  against  such  odds?  Our 
workers  are  proving,  even  with  the  inadequate 
means  at  hand,  that  some  things  —  some 
things  —  can  be  done.  The  idle  fingers  are 
being  taught  to  ply  the  needle  in  the  making  of 
useful  garments.  The  native  lace-making  is 
likewise  learned.  They  are  taught  to  sing  the 
songs  about  "Jesus  and  his  love."  It  is  pitiful 
singing  —  the  kind  that  makes  you  want  to 
creep  off  somewhere  and  cry  your  eyes  out  — 
but  they  sing  it  in  their  homes  after  the  mis- 
sionary has  gone,  and  their  little  children  hear  it. 

Possibly  the  sluggish  minds  do  fall  short  of 
comprehension  of  many  things  which  the 
patient  missionary   tries   to   teach   them,    but 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


103 


some  truths  even  they  grasp,  thank  God !  Listen : 
"I  went  to  our  women's  class  a  few  days  ago. 
I  sat  on  the  cushion  among  them  with  my 
accordion  lying  idly  across  my  knees.  I  asked 
them  to  repeat  the  hymns,  texts  and  lessons 
they  had  been  taught.  Forty  pathetic,  brown- 
eyed,  weary-looking  women  gathered  around 
me,  and  one  after  the  other  these  poor  ignorant 
souls  sought  to  recall  the  lessons  learned  — 
but  hymns,  texts,  stories,  all  —  all  began  and 
finished  in  the  same  way !  *  God  loves  us,  he 
sent  the  Lord  Jesus  (Sidna  Aisa)  to  give  his 
life  for  us  —  we  must  follow  not  with  our  lips 
but  with  our  hearts  and  he  will  take  us  to  him- 
self at  the  last.'  Useless  to  remind  them  of 
stories  told  from  the  Old  Testament,  of  miracles 
or  parables.  Their  lives  have  been  lived  closed 
in  by  high  walls,  and  in  windowless  rooms. 
They  know  no  other  school;  their  minds  are 
all  but  blanks,  but  —  and  it  makes  it  all  worth 
while  —  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God  has  penetrated 
the  darkness  and  they  know  in  whom  they  have 
believed.  'God  loves  us,  Jesus  died,'  this  was 
the  culmination  of  all  the  teaching,  and  the 
blood  of  Jesus  Christ  shall  cleanse  even  these 
poor,  ignorant  Moslem  women." 

A  CRY  FOR  HELP 

Does  not  all  this  carry  with  it  some  appeal  — 
some   conviction    of   vast  responsibility   to   us 


104 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


ft 

01 

;v'.1 


American  women?  The  most  favored,  as  we 
are  under  God,  of  all  the  women  in  the  world 
—  does  not  the  call  of  the  Moslem  woman  in 
North  Africa  for  whose  salvation,  physical  and 
spiritual,  we  alone  are  responsible,  strike  us 
dumb  with  pity,  and  conscious  of  our  negligence, 
startle  us  into  action? 

One  of  us  there  was  —  a  child  of  God  blessed 
with  gold  which  she  loved  only  as  she  could 
use  it  for  his  glory.  And  one  day  across  the 
seas  and  into  her  heart,  swept  from  North 
Africa  upon  the  leaden  wings  of  its  own  sorrow, 
came  the  cry  of  the  Moslem  women.  The  very 
springs  of  her  loving  sympathy  were  touched, 
and  the  heart  and  the  treasure  of  Francesca 
Nast  Gamble  were  forever  enlisted  in  the  cause 
that  should  make  for  their  relief  and  salvation. 

But,  having  struck  the  chord  of  the  music 
of  her  life,  the  Master  Musician  knew  that  he 
needed  it  for  the  heavenly  symphony.  The 
gates  of  the  city  swung  open  one  day,  and  the 
gentle  spirit  we  loved  entered,  to  go  out  no  more 
forever. 

In  her  death,  the  woman  whom  she  owned 
as  her  Moslem  sister  was  not  forgotten,  and  by 
her  royal  gift,  many  of  them,  too,  please  God, 
shall  some  day  enter  in  through  the  same  gate 
into  the  same  city. 


CHAPTER  V 


The  Woman  in  Black 

THAT  most  ancient  triumvirate,  the  World, 
the  Flesh  and  the  Devil,  is  represented 
in  the  Bulu  man,  according  to  Miss 
Mackenzie  in  "An  African  Trail,"  by  "the 
lust  of  Gain,  the  lust  of  Women  and  the  yoke 
of  Fetish." 

To  the  woman  who  has  opened  her  eyes  to 
as  much  of  creation  as  can  be  observed  by  the 
circumscribed,  brown-smoked  limits  of  an  Afri- 
can hut,  come  also  though  in  a  different  guise 
those  three,  the  World,  the  Flesh  and  the  Devil. 
To  her  the  "World"  is  the  community  —  the 
kraal  of  beehive  habitations,  if  you  please.  The 
"Flesh" — no  figure  of  speech  is  here,  under- 
stand —  is  that  of  her  husband,  her  family, 
herself.  The  things  which  concern  these  are 
centered  under  the  thatched  roof  of  her  hut. 

Things  there  may  be  in  pagan  Africa  which 
are  cornered  by  the  man  and  are  therefore 
taboo  for  womankind,  but  of  these  are  not  the 
"things  of  fetish,"  which  is  the  "Devil  "  of  the 
aforesaid  triumvirate.  Of  these  there  is  an 
over-supply,  and  for  them  she  does  not  want. 

Is  it  not,  after  all,  this  routine  of  the  African 
woman  —  the  things  of  the  people,  of  the  home 
105 


100 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


and  of  God  —  much  after  the  fashion  of  our 
own  life?  But  for  God,  the  African  woman 
worships  a  devil. 

In  the  matters  of  God  and  of  home  and  of 
community  must  that  woman  minister,  who 
goes  to  Africa  to  give  the  upward  lift  to  some 
other  woman's  life.  The  records  will  prove 
that  in  all  of  these  things  our  workers  have 
been  faithful,  and  where  they  toiled,  even  in 
years  agone,  there  have  arisen  black-skinned 
women  to  call  them  blessed.  But  the  workers 
were  then,  and  are  now,  all  too  few. 


A  HUMBLE  BEGINNING 

True,  as  long  ago  as  1877  the  Woman's 
Foreign  Missionary  Society  was  doing  some- 
thing for  Africa,  but  it  was  a  small  and  feeble 
effort,  the  maintaining  of  that  one  little  day 
school  in  Liberia.  Even  then  the  new  organiza- 
tion, barely  beginning  to  feel  that  it  would  grow 
up  some  day,  was  receiving  appeals  from  Li- 
beria to  secure  a  piece  of  land,  and  "establish 
a  home  for  the  education  of  females."  The 
Christian  boys  were  much  too  prone  to  go 
back  to  their  own  tribes  and  marry  heathen 
wives.  With  the  appeal  came  three  gold  rings 
worn  to  thinness,  the  pathetic  offering  of  a 
Liberian  woman  that  help  might  be  given  the 
daughters  of  her  race. 

It  was  at  the  eighth  session  of  the  General 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


107 


Executive  Committee,  in  1877,  that  this  call 
was  received,  and  the  hope  expressed  that 
what  Africa  had  missed  by  the  apparent  neglect 
of  her  by  the  church  might  in  the  near  future 
be  made  up,  our  Society  having  a  part  in  such 
service. 

Then  followed  during  the  years  other  sessions 
of  the  General  Executive  Committee,  when 
needs  of  the  Dark  Continent  were  pictured  by 
those  who  had  seen  them  and  knew  whereof 
they  spoke.  To  such  appeals  sympathy  was 
evidently  not  lacking,  for  from  time  to  time 
appropriations  of  varying  sums  for  work  there 
were  made.  The  treasury  was  never  drawn 
upon  for  some  of  these  amounts,  as  woman's 
work  in  that  day  in  the  mission  established  by 
our  church  was  little  more  than  prospective. 

Later,  occasional  efforts  were  made  with 
some  definiteness  to  begin  work  under  the 
Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society  in  this 
field.  Two  missionaries  were  supported  at 
different  times.  Little  success,  however,  was 
attained,  and  no  permanent  results  followed. 

The  plain  fact  is,  distasteful  though  it  be, 
that  after  all  the  lavish  outpouring  of  lives  in 
Liberia,  up  to  1883  Africa  had  been  too  much 
for  Methodism.  In  that  year  it  was  officially 
announced:  "The  Parent  Society  has  no  white 
missionary  at  present  in  Africa,  and  its  work 
has  been  greatly  lessened  in  that  country." 


108 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


UNDER  THE  PORTUGUESE  FLAG 

It  was  not  until  sixteen  years  later,  in  1899, 
that  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society 
again  entered  Africa  —  this  time  to  stay.  In 
that  year,  a  building  having  been  erected  pre- 
viously by  Bishop  Taylor  for  a  girls'  train- 
ing school  at  Quessua,  Angola,  Miss  Cora 
Zentmire  and  Miss  Josephine  Mekkelson  took 
up  their  quarters  there  and  to  the  joy  of  the 
Society  their  mission  school  bell  rang  once  more 
for  dark-skinned  children. 

Whatever  may  now  be  said  of  Quessua's 
being  beautiful  for  situation,  in  1900  it  was 
called  "a  field  as  lonely  as  could  be  imagined  — 
in  the  heart  of  Africa,  surrounded  by  serpents, 
hyenas  and  other  wild  beasts."  Not  especially 
promising  for  the  contemplation  of  a  prospec- 
tive missionary  candidate! 

But  steel  tracks  and  white  men  and  govern- 
mental policies  and  mission  stations  all  make 
their  impression  upon  a  missionary  landscape 
in  Africa,  and  Quessua,  no  matter  what  the 
complexion  of  its  people,  carries  a  black  name 
no  longer.  The  school  there  under  the  Woman's 
Foreign  Missionary  Society  is  but  six  miles 
|||»  from  the  town  of  Malange,  with  a  population 
of  over  three  thousand,  where  our  church  has 
a  mission  press  and  school.  Although  located 
back  from  the  coast  some  three  hundred  miles, 
a   railroad   threads   it   up   with   Loanda,    the 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


109 


capital  of  this  Portuguese  state,  and  a  mountain 
elevation  of  more  than  five  thousand  feet  above 
sea  level  affords  a  more  secure  defense  against 
fever. 

The  working  base  is  the  school  itself,  over- 
crowded just  now  with  girls  who  are  soon  to 
go  out  from  it  as  Christian  wives  and  Bible 
women.  Very  practical  industrial  arts  are 
taught  along  with  the  Bible  and  schoolbooks. 
Africa  must  first  know  spiritual  redemption, 
but  a  long  stride  toward  this  end  will  be  re- 
demption also  from  just  dirt.  "Spotless  Town  " 
is  never  to  be  located  upon  the  map  of  untouched 
paganism. 


A  MISSIONARY  FAIRY  TALE 

Who  in  all  the  world  before  ever  heard  of  a 
ready-made  town  handed  over  to  missionaries 
for  their  very  own?  This  isn't  a  fairy  story  — 
it's  the  honest  truth,  and  the  town  is  Old  Urn- 
tali,  in  Rhodesia,  over  which  flies  the  Union 
Jack  —  and  the  missionaries  were  Methodists. 
It  was  all  on  account  of  the  railroad,  which 
decides  many  things  in  Africa.  The  British 
South  Africa  (Chartered)  Company  in  1896 
picked  up  its  goods  and  chattels  and  carried 
them  from  its  base  at  Umtali  to  "the  other 
side  of  the  mountain."  This  was  a  distance 
of  ten  miles  but  it  was  easier  and  cheaper  to  V\ 
make  the  move  than  to  induce  the  railway  to  ,*J^f! 

A  iw  .  v/  3* 


110 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


clamber  over  to  Umtali.  This  circumstance 
left  a  perfectly  good  little  four-year-old  town 
standing  all  by  itself  with  no  one  to  walk  on 
its  streets  or  look  out  of  its  windows.  Cecil 
Rhodes  is  even  yet  a  name  to  conjure  with  in 
Africa.  It  was  in  1896,  when  he  was  asked 
what  could  ever  be  done  with  that  forsaken, 
lonesome  little  Umtali,  that  with  far  vision  this 
great  man  said,  "Make  a  mission  of  it."  So, 
as  the  fairy  story  might  put  it,  just  then  along 
came  our  Bishop  Hartzell,  "proper  'merican 
bishopy-man,"  his  carriers  called  him,  and  he 
said,  "I'll  make  Umtali  into  a  mission  for  you," 
and  with  the  help  of  some  other  folks  that  is 
just  what  he  did. 

The  jail  was  turned  into  a  schoolhouse;  the 
magistrate's  office  into  one  for  the  doctor;  the 
courthouse  hardly  knew  itself  as  the  hospital, 
and  the  barroom  of  the  hotel,  when  the  mission 
boys  appropriated  it  for  their  dining  room, 
gave  up  entirely  and  never  thought  of  being 
a  barroom  again. 

Transformations  like  these  sprouted  out  all 
over  the  town,  till  every  one  of  its  twelve 
brick  buildings,  with  the  town-site  and  twelve 
acres  of  land  approximating  a  value  of  $75,000, 
had  literally  come  into  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church. 

Of  course  there  was  any  amount  of  red  tape 
unwound,    and    much    time    consumed    during 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


111 


the  proceedings  of  transfer,  and  while  little 
Umtali  was  rather  ridiculously  changing  its 
name  to  "Old  Umtali,"  but  all  that  is  not  of 
so  much  concern. 

The  important  development  for  our  work 
arose  when  a  charming  bungalow,  less  than  a 
mile  from  the  center  of  things,  and  up  on  the 
mountain  side,  with  thirty-five  acres  of  land, 
was  deeded  over  to  the  Woman's  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary Society. 

Upon  the  day  in  1905  when  "Hartzell  Villa," 
our  hillside  bungalow,  was  finally  transferred 
to  the  Society  by  Bishop  Hartzell,  our  school 
work  began  with  nine  girls. 

The  usual  ups  and  downs  which  inevitably 
attend  missionary  beginnings  have  been  in 
evidence  in  both  Quessua  and  Old  Umtali. 
Despite  these  the  work  among  women  and 
girls  has  expanded  until  both  our  schools  have 
outgrown  their  quarters.  At  Old  Umtali,  our 
largest  center,  ninety-six  girls  are  housed  in 
accommodations  intended  for  sixty.  Quessua 
echoes  the  story  by  recording  an  attendance 
of  sixty  housed  where  but  fifty  were  planned  for. 

Not  to  provide  for  desperately  needed  new 
buildings  and  extension  centers  in  these  days 
of  rapid  growth  of  the  work  means  to  lose  ad- 
vantages already  gained  and  to  block  possible 
future  progress.  Results  in  Africa  have  been 
too  dearly  bought  to  be  flung  away  by  neglect- 


■m,.. '  'jp^. 


112 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


ing  to  make  them  serve  as  the  foundation  for 
larger  and  more  far-reaching  efforts  for  its 
redemption. 

It  is  gratifying  to  note  in  connection  with 
the  growth  of  the  work  of  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society,  that  there  have  recently 
been  five  young  women  who  have  volunteered 
for  service  in  this  needy  field.  Plans  whereby 
work  formerly  carried  by  the  Society  in  In- 
hambane  in  Portuguese  East  Africa  shall  be 
reopened  are  already  under  way,  probably  to 
result  there  in  a  new  boarding  school. 

It  is  repeatedly  said,  and  experience  would 
seem  to  confirm  the  truth  of  the  opinion,  that 
Africa  must  be  evangelized  by  Africans.  This 
being  true,  the  Society  is  on  the  line  of  right 
procedure  as  on  the  staff  of  its  workers  in  this 
field  it  numbers  two  women  of  that  race  — 
Susan  Collins  and  Martha  Drummer  at  Quessua, 
both  having  gone  out  from  the  United  States. 

Such  in  outline  is  the  work  of  the  Woman's 

Foreign  Missionary  Society  in  pagan  Africa  — 

a  mere  beginning  in  a  vast  field.   The  entrance 

into  it  by  our  missionaries  opens  to  us  a  door 

through  which  we,  too,  may  see  the  dusky  figures 

of   women    and   children    among   whom    they 

move. 

THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  BUSH 


Just  now  it  shall  be  the  pagan  woman  whom 
we  shall  follow  through  her  days,  whose  routine 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


113 


is  covered  by  the  things  of  her  Hut,  the  things 
of  her  Community,  and  the  things  of  Worship. 
While  it  is  true  that  the  pagan  woman  of 
Southern  Africa  has  a  thousandfold  more  of 
physical  freedom  than  her  Moslem  sister  in 
our  North  African  field,  "her  liberty,"  writes 
a  missionary  from  the  West  Coast,  "is  the 
liberty  of  the  beast  to  its  burden,  and  the  slave 
to  her  task."  Although  conditions  of  her 
social  life  vary  among  different  tribes,  every- 
where she  is  put  under  the  ban  as  a  thing  vastly 
inferior.  The  Rev.  John  M.  Springer  in  a 
journey  through  the  Congo  region  came  upon 
an  incident  conclusively  demonstrating  this 
fact.    He  says: 

"While  we  were  waiting  upon  the  bank  a 
woman  came  down  in  a  state  of  great  excite- 
ment, shrieking  and  gesticulating  in  a  most 
alarming  manner.  The  chief  listened  and  at 
first  assumed  an  expression  of  tragic  horror, 
when  shortly  he  clapped  his  hands  over  his 
mouth  and  began  to  laugh.  I  was  relieved  at 
that,  and  when  some  of  our  carriers  began  to 
understand  they  laughed.  I  inquired  into  it 
and  learned  that  this  woman  and  the  others 
of  the  kraal  had  been  working  in  their  gardens 
when  a  lion  had  boldly  made  a  charge  and 
carried  one  of  them  off.  It  was  only  a  woman 
that  was  taken.  It  was  rather  a  joke  on  the 
husband  thus  to  lose  one  of  his  wives,  but 


114 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


cheaply  is  human  life,  and  especially  woman 

life,  held,  that  it  meant  no  more  to  most  of 

them  than  the  news  that  a  goat  had  been  eaten. 

Nor  was  there   any  move  toward   a  possible 

rescue,    although    the    woman    was    evidently 

urging  it." 

BUYING  A  BRIDE 

Since  she  has  a  market  value,  differing  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  of  cloth,  brass 
wire,  chickens,  goats  or  oxen,  the  birth  of  a 
daughter  is  not  mourned  among  the  people  of 
the  kraals.  Her  father  looks  forward  to  the 
day  when  by  her  sale  the  family  revenues  will 
be  increased.  This  buying  of  wives  constitutes 
the  only  wadding  ceremony.  Festivities  there 
may  be  to  celebrate  the  event  by  the  friends 
of  the  bride  in  the  kraal  which  she  leaves, 
or  in  that  to  which  she  goes.  The  wife-buying 
custom  has  been  in  vogue  forever  and  a  day, 
and  in  reality  is  about  the  only  part  of  the 
nuptial  arrangement  which  gives  any  sort  of 
permanency  to  the  marriage  contract. 

If  the  girl  who  has  been  purchased  from  her 
men  folks,  possibly  before  she  was  born,  objects 
to  her  prospective  husband,  she  sometimes 
refuses  to  go.  In  this  case,  as  may  be  supposed, 
force  is  used.  The  girl  will  usually  succumb 
when  "witch"  is  threatened,  although  one  of 
our  missionaries  states  that  she  has  seen  an 
unwilling   bride  dragged  like   an   animal  from 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


11.5 


her  kraal,  by  the  husband,  who  for  the  purpose 
had  fastened  about  her  neck  a  twisted  cord 
made  from  the  bark  of  the  baobab  tree. 

The  trousseau  of  the  bride  is  very  simple, 
so  simple  that  it  scarcely  affords  a  basis  for 
description.  A  loin-cloth  of  skin  or  cotton 
fabric,  a  few  bracelets  of  copper  wire,  her  head 
shaved  in  a  fantastic  fashion,  with  some  blue 
beads  by  way  of  ornament  —  and  the  bride 
is  dressed. 

The  missionaries  grow  eloquent  over  the 
beauty,  suppleness  and  grace  of  carriage  of 
the  lithe  young  body  of  the  little  black  bride. 
They  shake  their  heads  sadly  when  they  tell 
of  its  frequent  cruel  disfigurement  by  tattooing, 
or  the  insertion  under  the  satin  skin  of  bits 
of  charcoal  or  other  foreign  substance  which 
produce  certain  welt-like  patterns. 

They  assure  us,  too,  that  the  girls  who  come 
to  our  schools  straight  from  the  native  kraals, 
unclad  and,  because  of  their  pagan  ignorance, 
devoid  of  modesty,  when  they  breathe  the  at- 
mosphere of  virtue  and  chastity,  joyously, 
even  eagerly,  delight  in  the  making  and  wear- 
ing of  the   simple  print  dresses  provided  for 

them. 

THE  BRIDE'S  NEW  HOME 

The  hut  into  which  the  little  African  bride  i  \  1,'i 
goes  takes  but  small  space  for  description.  W^jl 
It  is  almost  without  furnishings.    Among  the  -fH 

,-        ......    .•■''..  ,V\!"',Y'  v  i  '<>"_.':■  i-  ■  I  \    .'1  J 


$&m. 


116 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


tribes  visited  by  some  of  our  workers  there 
are  not  even  the  crude  stools  or  beds  which  are 
sometimes  found.  The  inevitable  mat  of  reeds 
on  which  to  rest  their  bones  serves  also,  hung 
over  the  hole-like  door,  to  keep  out  the  rain. 

The  fire,  always  either  burning  brightly  or 
smouldering,  never  being  allowed  to  go  out, 
occupies  a  space  in  the  center  of  the  floor  of 
hard-pounded  earth.  The  smoke  may  make 
its  exit  as  best  it  may,  or  it  may  remain  in 
the  hut,  which  it  mostly  does,  greatly  to  the 
discomfort  of  the  family.  The  dishes  or  other 
utensils,  except  for  the  clay  cooking  kettles, 
are  minus. 

Miss  Drummer  writes  of  one  such  stopping 
place  on  an  evangelistic  itinerary: 

"I  had  hammock  carriers  and  went  about 
eighteen  or  twenty  miles  to  the  south  of  us 
among  the  people  in  a  nest  of  large  villages.  I 
reached  Kalunga  on  Thanksgiving  Day.  No 
turkey  on  the  menu!  These  villages  are  near 
the  Quiz  River,  so  famous  for  crocodiles.  I 
drank  water  from  the  river  and  made  a  visit 
down  to  the  place  where  one  of  them  had  killed 
a  woman.  The  room  of  the  hut  I  lived  in  had 
no  such  luxury  as  a  door  or  a  window.  The 
hole  where  the  door  should  be  was  there  but 
only  a  reed  mat  was  put  up  at  night.  Goats, 
pigs,  cats,  dogs  and  my  neighbors'  children 
all  had  access  to  my  room  through  the  day. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


117 


Little  things  like  these  did  not  disturb  me  so 
long  as  my  food  box  was  locked.  Two  girls 
from  the  crocodile  country  came  back  with 
me  to  the  school." 

Polygamy  is  universally  practiced.  Indeed  a 
man's  social  status  so  far  as  his  earthly  goods 
are  concerned  is  measured  by  the  number  of 
his  wives.  Miss  Edith  Bell,  for  four  years  one 
of  our  church  missionaries  in  Africa,  visited 
in  the  village  of  one  chief  who  had  thirty-three 
wives,  while  another  only  two  days'  journey 
away  had  eighty-four.  A  few  of  these  surplus 
wives  are  usually  kept  at  the  chief's  headquar- 
ters in  huts  of  their  own,  and  the  rest  distrib- 
uted in  other  villages  over  which  he  rules. 

Into  such  conditions  as  these  goes  the  little 
new  African  wife,  probably  already  besmirched 
by  paganism's  foul  touch. 

A  CONTRAST  IN  BRIDES 

Contrast  with  such  a  picture  the  account  of 
the  wedding  of  one  of  our  Christian  girls  at 
Old  Umtali  as  reported  by  Miss  Coffin : 

"One  of  the  best  of  the  older  girls,  Nyonza, 
was  recently  married  to  Simbi,  a  former  mission 
boy.  Her  wedding  was  quite  the  prettiest  I 
have  seen  among  the  natives.  The  church  was 
prettily  decorated  with  flowers  and  filled  to 
the  doors  with  an  admiring  audience.  The 
bride  wore  a  dress,  handmade,  and  had  white 


118 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


vyy^wwvs 


flowers  in  her  hair.  Moyogotswa  and  Zweripede 
acted  as  bridesmaids,  and  we  had  quite  an 
exciting  time  getting  them  ready.  A  study 
in  black  and  white  they  made  after  the  dressing 
process  was  completed,  as  they  stood  in  solemn 
silence  surveying  one  another  while  waiting 
for  Simbi  and  his  friends  to  arrive.  Simbi's 
face  was  shining  with  soap  and  happiness. 
Just  as  the  procession  filed  into  the  church 
Moyogotswa  threw  a  vivid  pink  scarf  over  her 
shoulders.  This  scarf  she  had  carefully  con- 
cealed on  the  way  down  to  the  church  from  the 
possibly  disapproving  eyes  of  the  others,  until 
it  was  too  late  for  expostulation.  The  unex- 
pected appearance  of  such  grandeur  caused 
some  confusion  among  the  bridal  party,  so 
when  they  reached  the  altar  not  the  bride  but 
the  bridesmaid  stood  by  Simbi;  and  the  pastor, 
not  being  familiar  with  the  faces  of  the  girls, 
began  to  marry  Simbi  to  the  wrong  one!  To 
this,  however,  Simbi  emphatically  objected. 
The  girls  changed  places  and  the  ceremony 
proceeded." 

This  girl  and  her  husband  went  out  to  estab- 
lish a  new  home,  not  in  a  filthy  hut  but,  though 
lowly,  a  Christian  habitation,  that  savor  of 
life  unto  life  in  a  pagan  community. 

Marriage  and  giving  in  marriage  are  no  un- 
common events  in  our  schools;  certainly  no 
better  work  can  we  do  than  to  train   the   girls 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


11!) 


who  come  to  be  Christian  home-makers.  Such 
lamps  set  by  them  in  the  deep  gloom  of  Africa's 
night  are  sending  far  out  into  the  bush  long 
paths  of  light  in  which  others,  too,  may  walk. 

Miss  Clark  writes:  "Some  of  the  girls  marry 
teachers  and  we  are  especially  glad  when  they 
have  the  opportunity  to  help  the  people  that 
way.  Those  who  do  not  marry  teachers  have 
Christian  husbands  anyway.  Many  of  these 
girls  teach  sewing  and  help  in  Sunday  school  and 
in  personal  work  among  the  people." 


IN  THE  SWEAT  OF  HER  FACE 

The  work  of  the  non-Christian  African  wife 
is  cut  out  and  awaiting  her  arrival.  To  catalogue 
her  activities  would  be  to  list  all  of  the  back- 
breaking,  heart-crushing  forms  of  manual  labor 
known  in  the  Dark  Continent.  So  far  as  the 
system  of  family  support  here  is  concerned,  as 
contrasted  with  that  in  vogue  in  Africa,  the 
shoe  is  entirely  upon  the  other  foot.  There 
the  women  perform  all  the  labor  by  which  the 
husband  and  the  children  are  supported.  Be- 
yond contributing  the  minimum  of  assistance 
when  the  time  of  the  cutting  of  various  garden 
crops  is  on,  missionaries  declare  that  the  head 
of  the  African  hut  spends  an  existence  of 
idyllic  do-lessness,  smoking  his  pipe  under  the 
shade  of  some  friendly  tree. 

That    these    poor    women    are    considered 


120 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


valuable  only  as  they  can  bend  their  necks  to 
bear  the  seemingly  unbearable  yoke  of  life's 
burdens  is  incontrovertible.  As  an  example  of 
reducing  their  value  to  an  exact  mathematical 
calculation  the  case  of  a  certain  chief  might  be 
cited.  Seeing  a  plow  for  the  first  time  as  it 
ripped  up  the  earth  preparatory  to  planting, 
he  exclaimed :  "Why,  that  is  a  wonderful  thing ! 
It  can  do  more  in  a  day  than  ten  wives!" 

"Plow"  indeed  these  women  do,  scratching 
the  earth  a  bit,  and  scattering  the  seed  broad- 
cast. A  missionary  who  taught  some  of  our 
girls  to  plant  the  maize  in  hills  was  politely 
smiled  at,  while  they  whispered  to  each  other, 
"She  will  soon  be  asking  us  to  count  the  grains 
we  plant  in  each  hill!"  Often  the  gardens  are 
several  miles  from  the  hut,  and  to  these  the 
women  trudge  in  the  rainy  season,  with  their 
babies  on  their  backs.  With  short-handled 
hoes  they  cultivate  the  vegetables  or  grain, 
working  vigorously  up  and  down  and  in  the 
process  almost  joggling  the  poor  little  black 
babies'  heads  off. 

The  loads  they  carry  upon  their  heads, 
baskets  of  vegetables,  jars  of  water,  bundles 
b»  of  firewood  and  the  like,  are  almost  incred- 
ible. But  in  compensation  therefor  the  native 
woman  has  an  ease  and  grace  of  carriage 
which  it  is  said  would  be  the  envy  of  My  Lady 
in  America. 


AND  AMONG   THE   KRAALS 


121 


AN   AFRICAN   LARDER 

No  housewife's  calendar  of  menus  hangs  in 
this  woman's  kitchen.  There  is  no  kitchen, 
and  between  her  and  her  neighbor  there  is  no 
rivalry  in  the  preparation  of  new  and  tasty 
dishes.  For  it  is  the  same  old  thing  both  women 
cook  for  the  two  meals  of  the  day,  year  in  and 
year  out.  The  grain  most  used  where  our  mis- 
sionary girls  are  at  work  is  maize.  This  break- 
fast food  and  dinner  as  well,  however,  far  from 
coming  in  a  germ-proof  package,  a  premium 
coupon  perhaps  lurking  within,  must  be  liter- 
ally prepared  by  the  housewife  from  the  ground 
up.  The  sowing,  the  harvesting,  the  pounding 
in  a  mortar,  the  cooking,  are  all  the  labor  of 
her  own  hands.  The  finished  product  of  this 
combination  of  meal  and  water,  cooked  in  the 
clay  kettle  over  the  hut  fire,  is  a  thick  variety 
of  corn-meal  mush,  ordinarily  without  salt, 
because  salt  in  Africa  is  scarce.  I  have  it  upon 
the  word  of  one  of  our  missionaries,  that  a  few 
beetles  or  caterpillars  used  as  tidbits  in  the 
"sadza"  are  to  the  native  taste  a  very  delicate 
addition.  Twice  daily,  meals  such  as  this  are 
prepared.  To  be  eaten  with  the  stiff  maize 
porridge  there  is  also  a  gravy  or  sauce  of  green 
herbs,  used  somewhat  as  a  relish.  Where  pea- 
nuts are  raised  they  are  pounded  and  prepared 
in  such  fashion  as  to  be  really  delicious. 

In  another  part  of  our  field,  meal  is  made 


122 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


ii 


from  the  cassava  root,  after  soaking  and  drying 
it,  and  Dr.  Springer,  who  with  his  wife  in  the 
course  of  long  itineraries  has  actually  lived  upon 
porridge  made  of  this,  says:  "When  cooked  it 
resembles  thick  minute  pudding,  but  has  the 
color  and  the  consistency  of  India  rubber,  and 
a  decidedly  sour  taste." 

There  is  no  family  table  here.  Our  workers  see 
the  native  men  dipping  their  fingers  into  the 
common  kettle,  and  the  women,  who  never  eat 
with  the  men,  doing  likewise  as  their  turn  comes. 

There  is  so  much  that  is  of  the  earth  earthy 
in  the  life  of  these  women,  so  much  that  is 
intertwined  with  sex  and  sensuality,  that  we 
hear  with  distinct  relief  from  our  missionaries 
that  even  out  from  such  depths  as  these  con- 
ditions produce,  the  fair  flower  of  the  love  of  a 
mother  for  her  child  may  rise  and  blossom. 

The  story  is  told  of  a  little  child  taken  by  his 
father  to  a  mission  school,  who  never  saw  his 
mother  again  until  he  visited  his  native  kraal 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.  To  the  utter  chagrin  of 
the  boy,  his  mother  took  him  upon  her  back 
and  carried  him  through  the  town,  explaining 
with  joy  to  all  she  met,  that  "Twooh"  was  still 
her  own  baby  boy  and  had  come  back  to  her. 

BEING   MADE  WHOLE 

Medical  work  among  the  women  who  suffer 
from  many  and  dreadful  diseases  is  absolutely 

1 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


123 


indispensable.  All  our  workers  must  have  some 
knowledge  of  medicine  and  the  administration 
of  simple  remedies,  as  they  move  among  these 
childlike  folks,  for  our  organization  has  upon 
its  staff  in  Africa  no  medical  missionary. 
One  of  the  missionaries  writing  on  this  phase  of 
the   work   says : 

"Somehow  the  people  have  associated  the 
gospel  message  with  the  healing  of  the  sick. 
In  every  village  and  hut  where  I  go  they  are 
begging  me  for  medicine.  My  heart  is  pained 
when  they  bring  their  babies  to  me  for  help  and 
I  have  nothing  to  help  them  with.  Five  years 
ago  a  peck  of  quinine  was  given  to  me  in  New 
York,  and  what  a  blessing  it  has  been  to  our 
family  and  many!  I  bought  ten  dollars'  worth 
of  medicines  when  I  came  but  they  were  quickly 
exhausted.  I  wish  some  friend  to  our  work 
would  contribute  some  of  the  drugs  we  so  much 
need.  What  a  blessing  they  would  be." 

Such  pitiful,  terrible  need  for  medical  work 
as  is  found  on  all  sides,  especially  among  the 
women,  has  impressed  our  workers  with  the 
necessity  of  giving  to  our  older  schoolgirls 
some  simple  training,  particularly  in  maternity 
cases  and  care  of  babies.  Miss  Clark  writes: 
"Since  there  are  so  many  deaths  among  women 
at  this  time,  including  sometimes  those  of  our 
own  old  girls,  we  are  glad  we  can  teach  the 
girls  now  with  us  what  they  should  know.    A 


in 


UNDER  THE   CRESCENT 


number   of   them   can   do   good  work  for  the 
women  in  the  villages,  now." 

At  all  the  mission  stations  operated  by  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  in  Africa  some 
medical  work  is  being  done.  Granted  our  so- 
called  hospitals  and  dispensaries  may  not  meas- 
ure up  to  the  last  scientific  detail  required  for 
absolute  efficiency  of  equipment,  nevertheless, 
many  of  the  people  of  the  bush  in  them  have 
found  relief  from  pain,  return  to  health  and 
acquaintance  with  the  Great  Physician. 

A  recent  writer  in  Missionary  News  (Board  of 
Foreign  Missions)  throws  upon  the  screen  of 
our  missionary  vision  this  picture  of  one  of 
our  denominational  "hospitals"  at  Gikuki, 
East  Africa: 

"It  is  not  much  to  boast  of  in  size,  for  its 
waiting  room  is  all  out  of  doors  and  its  dis- 
pensary measures  only  sixteen  feet  square.  It 
has  no  chimney,  no  floor  except  the  earth,  no 
beds,  no  mattresses,  or  bed  covers  or  furniture. 
It  is  just  a  round  native  hut  which  accommo- 
dates fifteen  patients  and  all  the  others  sleep 
out  of  doors." 

Of  this  little  hospital  another  says : 

"One  of  the  most  Christlike  tasks  I  ever  saw 
in  our  recent  tour  of  the  African  Continent  was 
the  work  of  the  little  Gikuki  Hospital.  One 
patient  there  was  a  little  girl,  half  of  whose 
scalp  had  been  torn  off  by  a  hyena.    One  man 


ZZ2ZZZ2ZZ 


AND   AMONG   THE  KRAALS 


12.5 


was  covered  with  wounds  and  his  assailants 
had  tried  to  gouge  out  his  eyes.  Another  was 
a  leper.  A  month-old  baby  was  covered  with 
burns,  having  rolled  into  the  fire  on  the  floor 
of  a  native  hut.  This  is  the  only  hospital,  and 
the  two  benign  workers  are  the  only  medical 
missionaries,  for  over  a  million  of  people  in 
that  section  of  Africa.  The  missionary  doctor 
at  the  head  of  this  sixteen-foot-square  hospital 
declined  to  be  private  physician  to  one  Ameri- 
can, however,  at  five  thousand  dollars  a  year  — 
and  is  glad  he  went  to  Portuguese  East  Africa." 

THE  WOMAN  IN  BONDAGE 
So  in  her  home  in  the  African  bush  stands 
this  Woman  in  Black.  Herself,  her  husband, 
her  children,  her  home,  her  village  —  all  demon- 
shackled.  The  loveliest  things  ever  made  by  a 
beneficent  Creator  —  a  lacy  cloud,  a  brilliant- 
feathered  bird,  a  murmuring  brook,  even  her 
own  little  child  —  may  to  her  tortured  imagina- 
tion furnish  only  a  place  of  abode  for  a  devil 
bent  upon  her  destruction.  Surely  such  a 
system  of  hopeless,  withering,  soul-and-body- 
degrading  bondage  could  emanate  only  from 
the  very  Prince  of  Devils  himself. 

It  is  true  that  even  among  such  frightful 
conditions  as  these,  women  in  Africa  sometimes 
exercise  great  power  over  the  men.  A  doubtful 
compliment    this    when    applied    practically. 


126 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


H^ 


Warriors  have  sometimes  heeded  the  findings 
of  a  "woman  palaver"  on  so  great  a  question 
as  war,  giving  as  their  reason  for  accepting  the 
decision  their  belief  that  women,  being  by 
nature  nearer  the  evil  powers  of  the  underworld, 
are  therefore  "more  witch." 

Occasionally  a  woman,  by  usurpation  and 
intrigue,  may  rule  a  kraal,  as  was  the  case  of 
Shikanga,  in  whose  kraal  in  Rhodesia  Mrs. 
Springer  lived  and  worked  for  some  time.  But 
such  instances  as  these  are  rare. 

The  real  Woman  in  Black  —  she  herself  — 
is  bowed  to  the  earth  with  burdens,  her  eyes 
are  upon  the  ground,  and  a  legion  of  devils 
deride  her.  The  pathetic  appeal  made  by 
Africa's  women  to  our  missionaries  —  "Can 
we  learn  the  way  of  the  Lord  in  just  one  day?" 
—  is  freighted  with  despair  and  warning :  despair 
at  their  own  inability  to  learn  so  great  a  thing 
in  the  one  brief  visit  of  a  missionary  —  possibly 
the  sole  visit  in  years,  or  in  even  a  lifetime;  a 
warning  lest  such  faint  murmurs  for  help  across 
such  vast  distances  of  miles  and  civilizations, 
made  by  the  very  least  of  these  his  children, 
may  not  be  heard  by  the  women  of  Methodism. 

"More  than  anything  else  which  saddens 
me,"  writes  one  of  our  missionaries,  "is  the 
lack  of  religious  work  among  women.  At  some 
places  we  found  a  strong  church  and  a  school 
for  boys,  but  not  a  woman  could  be  found  that 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


1-27 


could  read,  very  little  being  done  for  them.  It 
is  not  due  to  a  lack  of  desire  on  their  part.  In 
most  cases  the  native  ministers  realize  that 
the  people  cannot  be  lifted  while  the  mothers 
sit  in  darkness,  and  that  they  will  never  have 
a  stable  body  of  Christians  until  the  women  are 
taught  to  read  and  can  have  the  Bible  in  their 
hands." 

While  the  church  waits,  the  crescent  of 
Islam  rises  higher  and  higher  over  the  dark 
forests  of  the  dark  people  of  Africa.  Already 
whole  tribes  have  been  Islamized,  and  the 
way  of  the  conqueror  is  the  way  of  Mohammed. 
To  the  already  insupportable  burdens  of  the 
womanhood  of  Africa's  desert  and  bush  Islam 
would  add  also  its  leaden  weight.  Now  the 
citadel  of  her  heart  may  be  easily  taken  for 
Jesus  Christ.  Mohammed's  hold  is  difficult 
to  loose. 


.^ 


CHAPTER  VI 


A 

ill 

[3 
#— li 


Little  Lost  Lambs 

THUS  far  the  slight  attempts  of  the  church 
at  large  to  reach  the  Moslem  children 
of  the  world  seem  to  have  placed  it  in 
somewhat  the  same  situation  as  that  of  a  cer- 
tain ancient  dame  of  wide  reputation  whose 
children  were  so  numerous  "she  didn't  know 
what  to  do!" 

And  numerous  indeed  are  these  hapless  little 
wights  whose  infant  feet  are  so  firmly  set  in 
the  way  of  Mohammed,  which  leadeth  unto 
death  eternal.  The  little  children  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Islam,  who  lisp  the  name  of  the  false 
Prophet,  are  half  as  many  as  those  who  in 
Christian  lands  repeat  the  name  of  Jesus. 
In  all  there  are  eighty  millions  of  Mohammedan 
children  —  one-eighth  of  the  childhood  of  the 
world  —  to  whom  has  been  doled  out  a  pitifully 
meager  portion  of  Christian  missionary  effort. 

THE  MOSLEM  PROBLEM 

The  Moslem  problem  today  is  still  the  problem 
in  the  majority  of  the  unoccupied  fields  of  the 
world,  since  it  is  largely  the  faith  of  their 
peoples.  Let  there  be  no  uncertainty  as  to  the 
conflict  between  Mohammedanism  and  Chris- 
1  128 

J 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


129 


tianity.  It  is  a  very  real  conflict.  The  sword 
of  the  Prophet  is  still  sharp  on  both  edges,  and 
throughout  the  whole  non-Christian  world, 
including  the  continent  of  Africa,  it  cuts  an 
increasingly  wide  swath. 

The  Moslem  menace  is  one  of  deep  serious- 
ness, and  has  an  emphatic  bearing  upon  the 
spread  of  Christian  missions  in  every  one  of 
the  great  world  fields.  It  is  a  sad  comment 
upon  us  as  Christians,  that  owing  to  the  limita- 
tion of  vision,  of  interest,  of  conviction  upon 
this  vital  subject,  there  have  followed  as  natural 
consequences,  a  lack  of  intelligence,  as  well 
as  a  lack  of  leaders,  in  the  cause  of  the  Cross 
against  the  Crescent. 

Seriously  to  ponder  the  following  summing 
up  of  the  case  of  Christianity  vs.  Islam  is  to 
recognize  the  colossal  dimensions  of  the  latter, 
and  to  see  that  without  the  overcoming  of  the 
existing  indifference  and  the  addition  of  hosts 
of  recruits  we  are  well  nigh  impotent  to  handle 
the  situation : 

"Islam  is  the  only  one  of  the  great  religions 
to  come  after  Christianity;  the  only  one  that 
definitely  claims  to  correct,  complete  and  su- 
persede Christianity;  the  only  one  that  cate- 
gorically denies  Christianity;  the  only  one 
that  seriously  disputes  the  world  with  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  the  only  one  which  in  several  parts 
of  the  world  is  today  forestalling  Christianity." 

M 


180 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


VITAL  POINT  OF  ATTACK 

Where,  then,  in  view  of  the  strength  of  Islam, 
shall  we  find  the  vital  point  of  contact,  through 
which  at  some  time  the  entire  corrupt  system 
shall  be  undermined  and  eventually  totter  to 
its  fall?  Unquestionably  in  the  reaching  and 
rescuing  of  the  eighty  millions  of  its  children. 
If  the  bitter  waters  of  life  through  Islam  are 
to  be  healed,  it  must  be  at  the  beginnings  of 
such  life  —  its  childhood. 

Authentic  figures  place  the  number  of  chil- 
dren in  Africa  in  Mohammedan  homes  north 
of  the  twentieth  parallel,  at  eight  million,  five 
hundred  thousand.  This  includes  our  Method- 
ist North  Africa  sphere  —  Tripoli,  Tunisia, 
Algeria  and  Morocco  —  containing  probably 
two-thirds  of  this  entire  number  of  Moslem 
boys  and  girls.  A  mighty  dent  would  their 
speedy  salvation  inflict  upon  the  armor  of 
Mohammed!  Such  a  missionary  achievement 
by  the  church  would  mean  not  alone  a  genera- 
tion of  Christians  stretched  along  the  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean  in  the  very  near  future. 
It  would  also  put  an  end  to  the  appalling  on- 
rushing  tide  of  Mohammedanism  which,  sweep- 
ing down  from  the  north,  now  threatens  to 
engulf  the  entire  continent  of  Africa. 

At  present  the  work  of  our  church  among 
Moslem  children  is  mostly  confined  to  the 
large  cities  in  our  Mediterranean  territory  — 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


131 


Algiers,  Constantine  and  Tunis.  In  all  of  these 
there  are  the  town  Arabs,  and  also  the  Kabyle 
children  whose  parents  have  come  down  from 
the  mountains  —  or  who  in  some  instances 
have  been  brought  from  their  highland  homes 
by  the  missionary  or  native  worker.  All  of 
these  children,  once  in  the  big  cities,  are  sub- 
ject to  the  same  conditions  of  life  in  the  native 
quarters — conditions  of  absolute  demoralization. 

Dr.  Edwin  F.  Frease,  superintendent  of 
Methodist  Missions  in  North  Africa,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  difficulty  in  securing  native  Arab 
and  Kabyle  preachers  observes: 

"Mohammedanism  has  the  most  disastrous 
effect  on  mentality,  morals  and  character  of 
any  religion.  The  adult  convert  from  it  is  not 
only  difficult  to  assimilate  and  develop  along 
spiritual  lines,  but  the  making  of  workers  from 
among  them  is  slow  and  very  uncertain. 

"The  surest  and  in  the  end  the  quickest  and 

most  economical  method  is  to  get  hold  of  the 

children  before  the  contamination  of  Islamism 

has  seized  them  in  its  fatal  grip,  and  to  bring 

them   up   as    Christians,    selecting   the    choice 

spirits  among  them  for  training  as  Christian 

workers." 

THE   SMIRCH   OF   ISLAM 

Sad  to  relate,  this  foul  "contamination  of 
Islam"  for  the  boy  and  his  sister  begins  its 
deadly  work  in  the  home  in  which  their  great 


132 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


W? 


brown  eyes  first  open  to  the  light.  Their  very 
maternal  heritage  is  a  handicap  from  the  start. 
Science  demonstrates  that  what  a  child  is  likely 
to  be  depends  much  upon  what  his  mother  was 
before  he  knew  her.  But  science  has  not  so 
much  as  a  bowing  acquaintance  with  Islam. 
Science,  unsought  and  unasked,  does  not  stalk 
through  the  windowless  walls  of  native  houses. 
Physically,  then,  Moslem  babies  come  into 
the  world  most  pitifully  equipped.  Infant 
mortality  in  Algeria  alone  climbs  up  to  sixty 
per  cent,  while  Morocco  confesses  to  seventy- 
five  per  cent.  A  legion  of  ills  which  breed  in 
the  lack  of  all  hygienic  provisions  in  the  home 
conditions  is  ever  ready  to  pounce  upon  the 
little  mites  of  humanity,  and  epidemics  among 
them  are  frequent  and  to  a  great  extent  fatal. 
One  medical  missionary  states  what  is  too 
horribly  true  in  most  Moslem  communities 
when  he  says:  "The  children  die  like  flies. 
The  weaklings  all  perish  and  only  the  hardy 
survive."  Missionaries  in  Algiers  and  Tunis 
affirm  that  the  children  among  whom  they  work 
are,  with  very  few  exceptions,  tainted  with 
unspeakable  diseases.  Another,  writing  from 
Morocco,  says:  "Immorality  and  frequency 
of  divorce,  with  a  total  lack  of  hygiene  com- 
bined with  superstitious  practices,  have  sapped 
the  brains  and  constitutions  of  over  eighty  per 
cent  of  the  children." 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


133 


With  the  heartbreaking  sight  of  little  sick 
children  ever  in  their  eyes,  and  before  lovely 
"Les  Aiglons"  up  on  the  hill  came  into  the 
possession  of  the  Woman's  Foreign  Missionary 
Society,  Miss  Smith  and  Miss  Welch  took  a 
cottage  down  by  the  blue  sea.  Here,  out  of 
the  stifling  heat  and  filth  of  the  native  town 
in  Algiers,  were  gathered  little,  pale,  ailing, 
hungry  Moslem  maids.  First  they  came  trem- 
blingly. Then  they  went  back  to  their  own 
people  again,  this  time  wide-eyed  with  the 
very  wonder  of  it  all,  to  tell  of  "more  than 
enough  to  eat,  clean  white  'nighties,'  and  songs 
about  some  wonderful  being  called  Jesus  who 
would  never  leave  them,  and  would  take  them 
after  awhile  safe  home  to  heaven."  "Paradise, 
they  called  our  home,"  writes  the  missionary, 
"and  the  garden  of  the  Lord  Jesus.  More  than 
one  little  child  asked  when  they  would  see  the 
Lord  walking  in  his  garden,  not  realizing  that 
they  met  him  often  as  we  knelt  to  pray  in  the 
cool  of  the  day." 

Into  such  a  home  as  that  described  by  another 
missionary  in  North  Africa  are  born  most  of 
the  children  known  to  our  own  workers : 

"  Many  a  time  in  visiting  among  the  very  poor 
I  have  sat  with  the  women  in  the  open  court, 
which  is  like  a  small  yard  in  the  middle  of  several 
houses,  in  which  several  families  have  one,  two, 
or  three  rooms.    In  the  court  there  may  be  a 


,~VJL- 


13-1 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


||lD^U«W;'ill2!!|.lL  '" 

w  ' 


dozen  women,  unwashed,  uncombed,  untidy 
to  a  degree;  some  breadmaking,  some  washing, 
others  nursing  their  babies, —  babies  who  are 
as  sick  and  unhealthy  as  they  can  possibly  be, 
their  bodies  ingrained  with  dirt,  their  eyes 
inflamed  and  uncleansed,  one  and  all  looking 
thoroughly  ill  and  wretched.  As  I  have  sat 
among  these  women  and  talked  with  them  I 
have  tried  to  reason  with  them  and  point  out 
the  advantages  of  cleanliness  and  industry. 
All  admit  that  I  am  right,  that  our  habits  are 
better  than  theirs,  yet  none  have  the  heart, 
or  the  energy,  or  the  character  to  break  away 
from  their  customs  and  their  innate  laziness 
and  to  rise  up  and  be  women." 

Far  be  it  from  American  women  upon  their 
pinnacle  of  Christian  privilege  to  blame  these 
others  when  we  consider  the  chance  these 
daughters  of  Hagar  have  had! 

Better  homes  than  these  there  undoubtedly 
are  among  them  but  even  here  such  influences 
prevail  as  to  make  precarious  the  beginnings 
of  physical  existence.  What  is  worse,  these 
influences  absolutely  dwarf  and  demoralize 
the  childish  character  in  the  day  when  it  should 
be  unfolding  God-ward  like  the  petals  of  a 
flower  to  the  sunlight. 

In  the  better  homes  boys  and  girls  are  sepa- 
rated while  still  young,  taking  their  places  in 
the  quarters  set  aside  respectively  for  men  and 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


135 


women.  The  taint  of  immorality  is  already 
coursing  through  their  veins.  The  obscene 
sights  and  conversations  encountered  among 
both  men  and  women  in  Moslem  houses,  can 
be  nothing  other  than  a  stimulus  to  the  natural 
precocity  of  the  Moslem  child  in  all  that  is 
impure  and  evil. 

Dr.  Robert  E.  Speer  quotes  Dr.  Cochrin  of 
Persia,  a  man  who  had  unsurpassed  opportuni- 
ties for  seeing  the  inner  life  of  Mohammedan 
men,  as  telling  him  that  he  could  not  say,  out 
of  his  long  and  intimate  acquaintance  as  a 
doctor  with  men  that  he  had  ever  met  one  pure- 
hearted  or  pure-lived  adult  man  among  the 
Mohammedans  of  Persia. 

With  this  in  mind  —  and  the  situation  is 
general  in  Moslem  lands  —  the  effect  of  living 
exclusively  among  the  men  of  his  home  plunges 
a  young  lad  into  the  very  vortex  of  immorality 
engendered  by  the  life  of  which  he  is  a  part,  and 
the  lewd  conversation  which  he  hears. 

The  little  maid  in  the  women's  quarters  is 
familiarized  with  all  that  is  impure  and  hideous 
in  the  life  of  the  harem.  Degrading  conver- 
sation and  foul  language  are  ear-marks  of 
Moslem  society.  Very  early  does  the  vampire 
of  impurity  through  this  means  fasten  itself 
upon  the  life  of  the  child.  The  consensus  of 
missionary  opinion  is  that  for  a  child  to  grow 
up  pure-minded  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  Moslem 


130 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


house  is  inconceivable.  In  this  connection 
Miss  Smith  says:  "We  seek  to  put  sweet 
stories  of  the  Holy  Child  into  their  minds,  and 
pure  songs  of  a  Happy  Land  on  their  lips,  and 
to  show  them  how  good  is  ready  obedience 
to  simple  commands.  But  it  is  no  easy  task; 
even  as  we  repeat  the  story  the  evil  word  is 
hurled  by  one  babe  at  another." 

Out  of  so  much  that  is  fraught  with  the 
unspeakable  heartbreak  of  wrecked  childhood, 
it  is  with  tears  of  joy  that  we  hear  our  workers 
in  Algiers  saying: 

"We  have  heard  the  gospel  told  by  baby 
lips,  where  no  other  would  have  had  a  hearing. 
'Did  you  tell  your  people  about  Jesus?'  we 
asked  a  girl  of  fourteen.  'I  tried  to,'  was  the 
reply,     'but   they    were    too    angry   to   listen. 

Only  Z was   allowed  to   tell   how   Jesus 

raised  the  dead  and  healed  the  sick,   and  old 

Uncle  L wiped  his  eyes  more  than  once.' 

Now  little  Z was  not  yet  six  years  old. 

So  we  sow  in  hope,  believing  the  seed  is  the 
living  Word  of  God  If  we  could  only  gather 
these  fifty  tinies  together  more  often!" 

Mr.  Purdon,  a  missionary  of  our  General 
Board  in  Tunis,  writes  of  the  atmosphere  of 
the  native  home  with  which  Methodist  workers 
there  are  familiar:  "The  child  is  taught  to  lie, 
is  encouraged  to  use  obscene  and  profane 
language  in  play  because  it  sounds  amusing." 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


13^ 


But  again  conies  the  cheering  consciousness 
that  the  pure  spiritual  ozone  of  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ  may  dissipate  pollution  even  such 
as  this.  One  day,  in  her  class  of  children  in  the 
native  town  in  Algiers,  the  missionary,  ever 
alert  permanently  to  fix  the  truth  she  sought 
to  teach,  asked,  "How  do  you  hope  some  day 
to  enter  the  heavenly  city?"  With  a  quick 
dash  of  native  color,  a  fourteen-year-old  girl 
answered,  "I  shall  knock  and  the  porter  will 
open."  "But,  suppose,"  persisted  the  teacher, 
"he  should  ask  what  right  you  had  to  enter- — 
what  would  you  say?"  Then  there  came  softly 
and  solemnly  across  the  lips  of  the  little  Moslem 
girl  the  plea  —  the  only  plea  which  has  held 
strong  and  sufficient  through  all  the  ages  for 
sin-fettered  souls  —  "I  shall  say,  'Christ  died 
for  me.":  But  to  make  very  sure  one  more 
query  was  put,  "What  are  you  doing  now  to 
prove  that  you  serve  him?"  and  came  the 
answer,  "I  used  to  steal  and  lie;  now  I  try  to 
do  neither." 


DEFECTIVE   FAMILY  RELATIONS 

The  atmosphere  of  the  Moslem  home,  how- 
ever, is  not  unmixed  with  a  certain  sort  of 
kindliness,  so  far  at  least  as  the  treatment  of 
the  children  by  their  parents  is  concerned.  It 
is  said  that  Moslem  children  are  unhappy 
not  because  of  lack  of  love,  but  because  of  lack 


138 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


of  knowledge  of  what  is  best  for  them,  and 
lack  of  wisdom  on  the  part  of  their  parents  in 
using  what  little  knowledge  they  have. 

When  you  reflect  upon  the  status  of  inferiority 
of  Moslem  women,  an  opinion  universally  held, 
you  are  not  surprised  that  the  children,  es- 
pecially the  boys  of  the  family,  hold  the  mother, 
along  with  the  other  women  of  the  house,  in 
great  contempt.  The  Rev.  J.  J.  Cooksey,  a 
missionary  of  our  General  Board,  writing  upon 
this  point  from  Tunis,  says  that  in  addition  to 
foul  language,  lying,  treachery  and  intrigue, 
which  are  common  things  of  the  home,  "Small 
boys  curse  and  strike  their  mothers,  who  glory 
in  their  manliness."  So  upon  the  sodden  heart 
also  of  the  Moslem  mother  descends  the  lash 
held  in  the  hand  of  her  son. 

Both  boys  and  girls  play  freely  in  the  streets, 
the  girl,  because  of  her  early  marriage  and  se- 
clusion, for  a  few  short  years  only.  Practically 
all  children  are  neglected  and  uncontrolled. 

This  situation  is  one  of  serious  proportions 
to  our  workers  who  in  the  homes  at  Algiers 
and  Constantine  must  constantly  meet  it  in 
the  lives  of  the  girls  they  seek  to  train.  Miss 
tfe»  Smith  says:  "Our  girls  need  discipline,  employ- 
ment and  guidance.  They  have  no  secular 
education,  no  home  education,  no  moral  train- 
ing. The  result  is  moral  chaos."  A  laboratory 
^  demonstration  of  this  is  given  upon  occasion 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


139 


in  the  matter  of  their  singing  when,  it  is  said, 
"They  sing  fairly  well  when  they  are  not 
swept  away  by  a  mad  desire  suddenly  to  shout 
or  try  to  sing  falsetto!" 

Sewing  is  insisted  upon  by  the  missionaries, 
not  so  much  for  "sewing's  sake"  as  for  teaching 
the  girls  in  the  native  classes  patience  and  self- 
control.  A  child  may  be  learning  well  to  ply  the 
needle  with  her  little  brown  fingers,  and  the 
teacher  rejoices,  only  to  be  saddened  by  the 
little  pupil's  early  departure  because  of  mar- 
riage. But  even  in  the  sewing  classes  wild 
young  hearts  are  reached,  and  lives  are  made 
purer  and  better  and  more  wholesome,  while 
in  character  these  girls,  exposed  forever  to 
what  is  unholy  and  impure,  grow  cleaner  and 
gentler  under  the  influence  of  Christian  control. 


IN  PEAR  FOR   THEIR  LIVES 

There  is  no  way  of  computing  the  number  of 
girls  once  under  the  teaching  of  our  mission- 
aries in  these  great  Moslem  centers  of  North 
Africa  but  now  in  the  close  seclusion  of  their 
own  homes,  who  treasure  in  their  hearts  the 
words  of  a  teacher  beloved,  who  is  somewhere 
out  in  the  big  world  —  God's  world,  not  Mo- 
hammed's ! 

While  baptisms  are  not  numerous,  and  pub- 
licly witnessing  for  Jesus  Christ  is  rare  among 
them,  our  workers  say  these  girls,  so  pitiful, 


HO 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


so  young,  carry  with  them  into  their  married 
life  standards  of  morality  that  are  new  to  their 
race,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  hope  of  eternal 
life. 

In  fear  for  her  very  life,  the  lips  of  many  a 
married  Moslem  girl  are  silent,  when  in  her 
heart  she  treasures  above  everything  the  love 
of  Jesus  Christ.  A  little  crippled  Kabyle  boy 
in  one  of  the  classes  was  asked  by  our  teacher, 
"Mohand,  do  you  still  love  the  Lord  Jesus,  and 
do  you  try  to  follow  him?"  Quick  came  the 
answer:  "Indeed  I  do  and  every  night  when 
the  light  goes  out  I  kneel  and  ask  him, '  O  Christ, 
give  to  my  aunt  who  loves  you  in  secret,  the 
faith,  the  courage,  whatever  it  may  cost  her, 
to  come  out  and  be  baptized.'  '  The  agonizing 
experiences  of  our  missionaries  among  these 
girls  find  expression  in  the  cry  of  one  of  them : 
"When  one  remembers  that  only  Moslem 
marriages  lie  before  our  girls,  one  longs  with  a 
great  longing  to  see  the  men  come  into  the 
Kingdom." 

MOSLEM   EDUCATION 

The  term  education  in  Moslem  lands  signi- 
fies strictly  religious  education.  The  universal 
standard  for  character  among  millions  of  little 
Moslems  is  Mohammed.  The  book  which  con- 
stitutes the  basis  of  all  learning  is  the  Prophet's 
book,  the  Koran. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


141 


Except  where  governments  have  concerned 
themselves  with  the  secular  education  of  the 
Moslem  children  under  their  control,  literacy 
among  them  is  scarcely  observable.  In  Egypt, 
where  under  the  British  regime  there  has  been 
unusually  favorable  and  continuous  contact 
with  the  educational  standards  of  the  West, 
recent  figures  indicate  that  out  of  over  a  million 
of  Moslem  children  between  the  ages  of  ten  and 
fourteen,  less  than  sixty-eight  thousand  can 
read,  and  of  these  but  three  thousand  are  girls ! 
Probably  in  our  North  African  field  a  similar 
count  would  show  femininity  intellectually  very 
much  more  to  the  bad.  Mohammedan  reason- 
ing apropos  to  the  education  of  girls  has  ever 
followed  and  still  follows  closely  the  attitude 
taken  upon  the  subject  by  Mohammed  and  all 
standard  Islamic  authors.  By  giving  more  or 
less  specific  instructions  as  to  the  education  of 
boys,  and  in  the  same  connection  absolutely 
ignoring  girls,  the  door  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment has  been  slammed  hi  the  face  of  the  fe- 
male population  of  the  world  of  Islam.  The 
Prophet's  one  deliverance  in  regard  to  girls  \ 
was:  "Do  not  let  them  frequent  the  roofs," 
a  temporary  escape  from  seclusion!  "Do  not 
teach  them  the  art  of  writing,"  which  would 
be  likely  to  set  their  minds  a- working!  "Teach 
them  spinning,"  continues  this  arch-enslaver 
of   women,    "and   the   chapter   of   the   Koran 


Ufa 


14^2 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


called  En  Nur."  The  revelations  in  this  par- 
ticular chapter  refer  to  women  of  known  or 
suspected  immoral  life! 

Moslem  education  at  its  best  does  little  to 
reduce  actual  illiteracy,  while  it  implants  and 
nourishes  the  grossest  superstitions,  and  feeds 
the  childish  mind  upon  literature  which  is 
corrupt  and  obscene.  Dr.  Zwemer  says:  "The 
religious  primers  published  for  the  use  of  boys 
and  girls  even  in  Egypt  contain  matters  con- 
cerning which  every  boy  and  girl  should  be  in 
ignorance,  and  generally  speaking,  all  Moslem 
religious  literature  is  unfit  for  the  mind  of  a 
child."  A  child's  primer  on  religion,  written  by 
a  notable  Islamic  theologian,  and  having  an 
enormous  circulation  throughout  Egypt  and 
North  Africa,  clearly  sets  forth  what,  to  the 
mind  of  the  author,  the  Moslem  child  should 
be  taught.  It  teaches  preposterous  doctrines 
as  to  God;  the  utter  scorn  and  contempt  of 
Christianity;  matters  opening  the  young  eyes 
as  to  marriage,  divorce  and  kindred  topics, 
beside  such  a  vile  stream  of  obscenity  and  in- 
decency as  to  make  certain  portions  of  it  unfit 
for  publication  in  English. 

Add  to  the  effect  of  moral  impurity  upon  the 

life  of  the  Moslem  child,  that  of  absolute  belief 

in  unthinkably  absurd  superstitions,  and  you 

furnish  him  with  a  life  load  under  which  he  can 

'   scarcely  stagger.    The  child  of  Islam,  "every- 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


143 


where  and  in  all  circumstances  is  born  into  a 
world  of  superstition."  It  is  the  first  and  all- 
important  task  of  his  mother  to  protect  her 
child  from  a  legion  of  "jinn,"  and  the  multi- 
tude of  their  close  relations  —  devils  and  bad 
angels.  Poor  little  youngster,  hung  about  with 
all  sorts  of  amulets,  doubtless  much  in  his  way, 
and  provided  with  iwo  recording  angels,  one 
perched  upon  each  of  his  infant  shoulders! 

The  Occidental  child  may  laugh,  as  he  does, 
at  tales  from  the  Arabian  Nights  in  which  the 
"genii"  figure,  and  in  which  sometimes  "one 
of  those  evil  Afrites  whom  the  lord  Solomon 
(upon  whom  be  peace)  did  imprison  in  bottles 
of  brass  and  cast  into  the  sea,"  is  pulled  forth 
by  a  luckless  fisherman!  To  the  Moslem  child 
all  this  is  no  fabrication  of  fancy.  The  goblins 
which  are  likely  to  "git"  him  are  real  goblins 
—  as  real  as  Haroun  Al-Raschid  himself. 

At  the  beginning  they  are  intellectually 
nimble  enough,  these  boys  and  girls.  Indeed 
we  are  informed  by  Christian  teachers  that  to 
a  degree  they  are  wide-awake  and  intelligent 
but  "this  intelligence  markedly  diminishes 
as  they  grow  out  of  childhood,  probably  due  to 
the  inherited  influences  of  early  marriages,  and 
also  to  the  methods  of  education." 

Certainly  no  young  Americans  could  more 
neatly  turn  the  trick  of  adaptation  to  circum- 
stances than  the  little  lads  brought  down  to 


144 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


the  Methodist  Home  for  Boys  in  Algiers  from 
the  mountains  of  Kabylia.  The  superintendent, 
the  Rev.  J.  D.  Townsend,  says  of  them :  "  These 
boys  come  down  to  us  having  never  seen  a  train, 
a  street  car,  an  electric  light  or  a  moving  picture. 
In  two  months  they  are  living,  acting  and  talk- 
ing as  if  they  had  been  brought  up  on  Broad- 
way." 

THE  NEED  OF  HOMES 

The  secular  education  of  the  children  of 
North  Africa  where  our  mission  centers  are 
located  is  not  in  the  hands  of  the  missionaries, 
but  under  the  direction  of  the  French  govern- 
ment. With  the  State  thus  monopolizing  the 
educational  interests,  it  was  seen  at  the  very 
beginning  of  our  missionary  activities  in  this 
field  that  for  purposes  of  religious  training 
Homes  for  both  boys  and  girls  must  be  provided. 

The  Homes  for  Arab  and  Kabyle  boys  main- 
tained by  our  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  in 
Algiers,  Constantine  and  Tunis  have  been 
strikingly  successful.  Boys  over  ten  years  of 
age  are  not  received.  This  in  itself  is  a  shocking 
commentary  upon  Mohammedan  morals  when, 
as  a  reason  for  fixing  this  as  the  age  of  admis- 
sion, it  is  stated:  "It  is  scarcely  likely  that 
older  boys  taken  into  the  Home  can  be  made 
to  forget  the  customs,  habits  and  vices  that 
have  been  among  their  people  for  countless 
&5w   generations  and  upon   which  they  have  been 


(Upper)  In  toe  Garden  at  Les  Aiglons 
(Lower)  Miss  Collins  Mothers  the  Babies 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


U5 


accustomed  to  look  from  their  infancy."  The 
enthusiastic  workers  in  these  institutions  pro- 
nounce their  boys  as  fine  and  healthy  and 
peaceable  as  can  anywhere  be  found. 

The  majority  of  them  will  become  Christian 
workers.  Dr.  Frease  states  that  such  an  out- 
put has  already  commenced.  Four  of  the  native 
preachers  are  the  first  fruits  of  this  work,  and 
one  boy  has  won  a  government  scholarship 
which  is  carrying  him  through  his  medical 
training. 

The  beautiful  Home  for  girls,  "Les  Aiglons" 
(The  Eagles),  established  by  the  Woman's 
Foreign  Missionary  Society  in  Algiers,  in  1915, 
is  the  answer  to  the  believing  prayers  of  our 
workers  for  years  —  the  realization  of  a  dream 
come  true.  High  up  on  a  hill  it  perches,  this 
Eagle's  Nest,  away  from  the  stifling  atmosphere 
of  the  "old  town,"  suffocating  alike  for  bodies 
and  souls.  To  it,  since  first  it  opened  its  doors 
in  welcome,  have  come  the  little  maids,  rescued 
from  hateful  Moslem  marriages.  Here  they 
may  breathe,  unveiled,  the  fresh  air  in  God's 
own  out-of-doors,  and  play  in  a  real  garden, 
and  live  through  the  golden  days  of  a  real 
childhood.  In  the  end,  please  God,  they  will 
be  Christian  mothers,  or  as  Bible  women  bear- 
ing the  message  of  a  Savior's  love  they  will  go  , 
in  and  out  among  the  sad,  secluded  daughters  H 
of  their  own  race.  J*1 


,^iMi 


14G 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


k 

m 

{19 
if 


The  property  itself  was  the  first  to  be  ac- 
quired by  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  in 
all  North  Africa.  The  final  purchase  for  our 
organization  was  effected  by  the  persistent 
efforts  of  Bishop  Hartzell  and  Dr.  Frease,  and 
the  unwinding  of  much  red  tape  in  obtaining 
government  recognition  of  a  legal  status  for  our 
denominational  body. 

Here  are  gathered  today  a  joyous  family 
of  tenderly  mothered  little  Arab  and  Kabyle 
girls,  a  family  which  even  now  taxes  the 
capacity  of  "The  Eagles."  To  secure  one 
Moslem  girl  for  Christian  training  in  North 
Africa  is  nothing  short  of  a  miracle.  What  shall 
we  say,  then,  of  these  days  when  in  this  almost 
untouched  Moslem  field,  as  bigoted  as  any 
under  heaven,  more  girls  are  being  offered  than 
we  can  take?  This  very  day  comes  a  letter  from 
Les  Aiglons: 

"I  might  have  had  another  little  Moslem 
girl  today.  Little  Fatima  took  me  'home' 
with  her  after  the  class.  I  found  her  mother  in 
a  long  narrow  room,  so  low  that  she  had  to 
bend  as  she  walked  about,  for  it  was  impossible 
to  stand  upright.  The  father,  too  ill  to  move, 
was  lying  on  the  floor  with  an  illness  so  in- 
fectious that  the  hospital  refused  to  admit  him. 
Little  Fatima,  I  fear,  has  taken  it,  and  already 
her  leg  shows  signs  of  breaking  into  an  open 
wound.    The  mother  said:    'Why  didn't  you 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


147 


take  my  little  Malha?'  And  ch,  she  is  so  white 
and  thin  but — .  You  know  we  have  prayed 
for  the  chance  of  saving  these  little  Moslem 
girls  for  over  twenty  years!" 

No  room  was  there  in  the  Eagle's  Nest  for 
poor  little  Fatima  "so  white  and  thin!"  Al- 
ready there  are  other  little  girls  there  such  as 
she,  for  whom  no  support  has  been  promised, 
yet  whom  the  loving  hearts  of  the  women  who 
mother  them  could  not  turn  away. 

The  Home  for  Girls,  in  hoary  old  Constantine, 
partially  supported  by  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society,  has  an  almost  tragic  story 
of  growth.  Already  has  this  tree  of  the  Master's 
own  planting  borne  fruit  in  the  open  confes- 
sion and  public  baptism  of  the  two  oldest  girls, 
with  others  to  follow.  Moslem  girls  crowd  the 
larger  house  which  we  have  provided,  and  Miss 
Loveless  is  pleading  for  a  permanent  headquar- 
ters building  "all  our  own"  for  this  miraculous 
work.  "How  wonderful  it  seems,"  she  writes, 
"as  we  look  back  to  the  day,  four  years  ago, 
when  we  commenced  this  work  with  only  two 
girls,  and  we  feared  they  might  not  stay  because 
of  the  bigotry  of  their  parents.  Think  of  today 
when  fathers  and  mothers  are  bringing  us  their 
children  and  begging  us  to  take  them!" 

In  Tunis,  in  a  situation  presenting  extraordi- 
nary difficulties,  consequent  upon  suspicion  and 
bigotry,  Miss  Annie  Hammon  steadily  persists 


148 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


in  her  efforts  to  gather  in  the  girls.  The  demand 
here  in  better  homes  for  girl  servants,  the  de- 
pendence for  a  living  of  many  poor  families 
upon  what  a  little  girl  may  beg  or  earn,  and  a 
deeply  ingrained  hatred  of  Christianity,  make 
results  difficult  and  slow.  Several  girls,  how- 
ever, are  now  under  Miss  Hammon's  care. 

Reference  has  previously  been  made  to  the 
large  numbers  of  people  from  southern  Europe 
who  have  flocked  to  the  Mediterranean  region 
of  North  Africa.  These  come  from  different 
countries,  but  naturally  the  majority  are  from 
France.  Among  the  women  of  this  Roman 
Catholic  population  of  Algiers,  who  are  con- 
stantly and  in  increasing  numbers  throwing  off 
the  yoke  of  Rome,  the  Woman's  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary Society  has  a  small  but  well-established 
work.  Classes  for  the  religious  instruction  of 
women  and  girls  are  regularly  held.  Miss  Mary 
Anderson,  in  charge  of  this  important  depart- 
ment, greatly  rejoices  over  the  second  one  of 
the  girls  in  her  French  Bible  Class  who  has 
come  out  definitely  for  missionary  service.  One 
is  now  on  our  staff  in  the  Girls'  Home  in  Con- 
stantine,  the  other  an  assistant  in  Algiers. 
So  does  the  great  Captain  of  our  salvation  call 
out  his  recruits. 

Sadly  they  wrote  after  little  Dah'byia  had 

gone  to  the  heavenly  mansion  for  which  she  was 

j,1  so  ready,    "Is  it  prophetic,  that  like  Abraham 


AND  AMONG  THE   KRAALS 


149 


of  old,  the  first  plot  of  land  we  hold  in  a  country 
we  claim  for  Christ  should  be  a  grave?" 

Yes,  before  the  days  when  happy  voices  rang 
through  the  garden  of  Les  Aiglons,  our  Society's 
first  holding  in  North  Africa  was  a  grave  —  a 
child's  grave!  For  the  sake  of  the  Holy  Child, 
for  the  sake  of  that  one  little  grave,  must  the 
hearts  of  the  daughters  of  Methodism  brood 
in  great,  overwhelming  tenderness  over  these 
little  stray  lambs  of  Islam.  "The  problem  is 
no  longer  to  get  children.  They  are  being  thrust 
upon  us.  We  shall  be  neglecting  a  distinct  call 
from  God  if  we  do  not  step  into  this  open  door 
and  seek  to  save  the  children  of  God." 


THE  DRUMBEAT  OP  THE  BUSH 

A  curious  thing  is  that  African  drum  they 
tell  us  about.  For  Africa  is  a  land  of  drums. 
Nervous  folks  take  notice!  Quite  simple  of 
construction  is  this  drum,  too,  for  such  an  im- 
portant maker  of  noises  —  a  bit  of  the  hollowed- 
out  trunk  of  a  tree  with  a  skin  of  some  animal 
covering  the  ends,  two  short  slits  cut  in  the  top 
of  the  log,  and  there  you  are!  Mighty  clever, 
are  the  black  people  in  drumbeating,  mind  you. 
It  is  the  original  wireless,  the  wireless  of  the 
bush.  They  send  messages  by  the  drumbeat, 
as  you  would  by  telegraph.  With  his  drum-code 
a  chief  or  warrior  can  send  a  message  that  will 


150 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


be  perfectly  understood  by  another  chief  or 
warrior  many  miles  away.  Henry  M.  Stanley's 
movements  were  known  to  a  nicety  by  the  dusky 
tribes  of  the  forest  among  which  he  fared. 
And  when  the  drum  beats  for  you,  there  is 
nothing  whatever  to  do  but  go!  Be  it  to  the 
feast,  or  to  war,  or  for  the  woman  palavers  — 
for  there  is  a  drumbeat  for  women  —  you  must 
move  promptly  and  in  time  with  that  call  of 
the  drum. 

So  right  here  we  will  give  the  drumbeat  for 
the  children  of  black  Africa,  if  you  please.  And 
to  your  imagination  there  will  surely  come  again, 
though  far  away  from  classic  Hamelin  Town, 

"  A  rustling  that  seems  like  a  bustling 
Of  merry  crowds  jostling  at  pitching  and  hustling" — 

and  over  fourteen  millions  of  little  Africans, 
living  from  the  twentieth  parallel  and  south 
all  over  the  continent,  are  responding  to  the 
drum  which  beats  for  them ! 

Over  one  million  and  a  half  of  these  live  south 
of  the  equator,  the  biggest  part  of  the  number 
being  little  pagan  people  who,  Topsy-like,  have 
"just  growed."  It  is  among  these,  in  Angola 
and  Rhodesia,  that  the  missionaries  of  the 
Woman's  Foreign  Missionary  Society  are  at 
work  —  fine  young  women  they  are,  some  of 
them  with  university  degrees  affixed  to  their 
names. 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


1.51 


THE  LITTLE  BLACK  BABY 

As  lives  one  child  in  Africa  who  survives  the 
vicissitudes  of  entrance  into  his  black  world, 
and  the  years  allotted  to  childhood,  so  for  the 
most  part  live  they  all. 

Poor  little  black  baby  —  his  mother,  though 
she  loves  him,  has  very  queer  ideas  about  his 
upbringing.  As  likely  as  not  she  laughs  in  a 
vastly  superior  way  when  the  missionary  tries 
to  teach  her  how  to  feed  the  little  mite  properly. 
Her  way  is  to  hold  him  in  her  lap,  his  back  to 
her,  her  motherly  hand  full  of  exactly  the  same 
sort  of  "sadza"  the  grown-ups  eat,  held  con- 
veniently under  his  chin.  Then  she  proceeds 
literally  to  stuff  that  baby,  using  in  the  process 
instead  of  a  spoon  the  forefinger  of  her  free  hand. 
When  the  poor  little  stomach  is  distended  to 
actual  hardness  and  he  is  probably  howling 
with  stomach  ache  his  mother  is  sure  that,  for 
the  time  being,  he  has  had  enough! 

In  Liberia  the  ceremony  of  feeding  is  varied 
by  adding  to  the  mixture  of  rice  and  palm  butter 
which  makes  his  menu,  a  generous  portion  of 
pepper.  Very  often  after  the  feeding,  and  sup- 
posedly to  his  further  infantile  discomfort,  the 
baby  is  laid  upon  his  back  with  his  eyes  blink 
ing  at  the  sun ! 

Bishop  Hartzell  writes  of  the  case  of  a  sick 
child  whom  he  came  across  when  he  and  the 
doctor  from  the  mission  were  out  on  a  trip..** 


152 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


The  bishop  says:  "I  heard  a  baby  crying  most 
of  the  night  in  a  house  not  far  from  where  I 
slept.  The  doctor,  going  out  in  the  morning, 
found  that  the  mother  had  disobeyed  his  orders 
as  to  food  for  the  sick  child,  and  commanded  her 
to  show  him  what  she  was  feeding  the  baby, 
and  he  showed  it  to  me.  Its  odor  and  appearance 
would  suggest  that  it  had  been  taken  from  an 
ordinary  swill-barrel.  It  is  difficult  for  the 
heathen  mother  to  understand  that  milk  is 
food." 

One  of  our  missionaries  says  that  the  mothers 
of  babies  who  suffer  from  digestional  disturb- 
ances have  often  come  to  her  asking  for  medi- 
cine to  cure  them  from  the  "snake"  which  was 
causing  the  difficulty! 

Human  life  is  cheap  in  Africa,  and  vital 
statistics  including  those  on  infant  mortality 
are  not  available.  The  testimony  of  missionaries 
goes  to  show  that  unnumbered  multitudes  of 
babies  die  in  infancy,  and  that  a  child  robust 
enough  to  survive  the  terrors  which  in  many 
forms  assail  African  baby  days  can  endure 
anything. 

The  thrilling  story  of  Mary  Slessor  of  Cala- 
bar and  her  courageous  fight  against  the  murder 
of  twins  is  familiar  to  the  mission-reading  world. 
The  superstition  that  a  household  is  bewitched 
!  by  the  entrance  into  it  of  more  than  one  baby 
at    a    time    is    widespread.      This    unnatural 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


153 


practice  is  perfectly  familiar  to  Methodist  work- 
ers in  our  various  South  African  fields.  The 
putting  out  of  the  way  of  such  surplus  additions 
to  the  family  is  to  the  pagan  mind  merely 
destroying  the  power  of  some  evil  spirits  who 
enter  it  in  this  fashion.  One  of  our  church  mis- 
sionaries knew  of  twins'  having  been  destroyed 
in  an  out-station  near  our  headquarters  by 
being  covered  with  hot  stones. 

Governments  are  doing  much  to  suppress 
this  most  inhuman  custom,  but  even  with  their 
vigilance  it  is  seldom  that  a  pair  of  twins  is  to 
be  seen.  Very  secret  and  mysterious  happenings 
there  may  be  in  a  hut  in  the  African  bush,  if 
two  little  bits  of  humanity  open  their  eyes  there 
in  the  night,  instead  of  the  one  which  was 
expected. 

Even  the  Christian  convert  finds  exceedingly 
difficult  the  abandonment  of  his  fear  of  a  pair 
of  innocent  little  black  babies  who  happened     y*m  m 

to   walk  in   the   path   of   the   great  eternities  -C,m .  wP> '"' 
together   and  arrive  upon  earth  at  the   same 
time. 

Bishop  Hartzell  was  once  visited  by  one  of 
his  leading  native  workers,  a  fine  fellow  with 
a  wife  and  three  children,  who  came  in  great 
distress  of  mind.  His  wife  had  become  the 
mother  of  twins,  and  the  family  greatly  feared 
the  curse  of  God  upon  their  home.  "It  took  me 
some   time,"   says   the   bishop,    "to   quiet   his 


154 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


fears.  It  greatly  helped  him  when  I  told  him 
about  my  own  beautiful  twin  sisters,  and  how 
happy  we  were  to  have  them." 

TOOTH  TROUBLES 

It  is  all  too  true  that  the  African  baby 
really  does  "  take  its  life  in  its  hands!"  Many 
and  dreadful  are  the  meshes  of  the  net  of  witch- 
craft, spread  for  his  ignorant,  unwary  little 
feet.  To  cut  the  upper  teeth  first  is  inexcusable 
in  any  infant!  It  plainly  indicates  witch  asso- 
ciations, and  should  the  child  be  a  girl  and 
grow  to  maidenhood  no  husband  will  await  her. 
The  story  of  Shakeni,  a  girl  at  Old  Umtali,  as 
related  by  Mrs.  Springer,  well  illustrates  with 
what  a  grip  such  an  absurd  superstition  may 
hold  the  native.  This  girl,  although  strikingly 
handsome,  had  reached  the  extreme  age  of 
twenty  or  thereabouts,  and  was  still  "fancy 
free"  as  regards  her  marriage.  Mrs.  Springer 
relates  that  she  said  to  Jonas,  her  house  boy, 
after  she  had  seen  Shakeni:  "Why  isn't  Shakeni 
married?"  Jonas  shrugged  his  shoulders  im- 
pressively. "Why  isnt  she  married?"  she  per- 
sisted. The  question  had  to  be  repeated  several 
times  before  he  reluctantly  answered,  "Because 
she  cut  her  upper  teeth  first."  "I  was  sure  my 
ears  deceived  me,"  says  Mrs.  Springer,  "but 
he  went  on  to  explain:  'In  our  country  it  is 
very,  very  bad  to  cut  the  upper  teeth  first.   A 


AND   AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


155 


child  that  cuts  the  upper  teeth  first  is  bewitched 
and  it  is  the  custom  of  our  people  to  bury  such 
a  one  alive.  I  suppose  her  mother  loved  her 
child  and  didn't  want  to  do  it,  and  now  there 
isn't  a  man  in  all  the  country  who  will  marry 
her.'" 

That  benign  personality,  the  family  physician, 
is  an  unknown  quantity  in  the  African  hut, 
unless  a  missionary  doctor  chances  to  be  near 
by.  The  terrors  of  the  witch-doctor,  possessor 
of  the  black  art  —  taid  the  blacker  heart  — 
are  well  known.  A  little  knowledge  of  medicinal 
herbs  is  his  sole  compass  of  materia  medico, 
and  demonology  his  real  stock  in  trade.  Hideous 
in  aspect,  cruel  to  the  core,  rejoicing  in  diabolical 
practices,  he  is  the  very  incarnation  of  the  evil 
one,  and  pagan  Africa  groans  under  his  fiendish 
tyranny.  An  easy  prey  to  his  wiles  of  witch- 
craft are  sorrowing  mothers  and  their  little 
children,  of  all  his  victims  the  weakest  and  most 

hopeless. 

TOILING  CHILDHOOD 

As  to  the  matter  of  child  labor,  there  is  no 
excitement,  and  concerning  it,  within  the  mem- 
ory of  the  oldest  inhabitant,  there  has  never 
been  a  breath  of  agitation.  When  in  Africa 
childhood  itself  begins,  that  very  day  begins 
the  binding  upon  infant  backs  of  the  crushing 
burden  of  work.  We  speak,  of  course,  of  female 
child  labor,  for  of  other  child  labor  in  the  dark 


150 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


land  there  is  none.  Of  real  girlhood  itself  there 
is  so  pitifully  little.  The  small  maid,  a  diminu- 
tive replica  of  her  mother,  almost  before  she 
can  toddle  is  carrying  a  load  or  trudging  along 
to  the  garden  in  the  wake  of  an  older  girl  whose 
child  she  is.  Every  subsequent  chapter  of  her 
life,  from  the  day  she  first  brings  up  the  firewood 
to  the  hut,  reads  exactly  alike  —  work,  work, 
work. 

There  are  games,  a  few,  they  tell  us,  played 
by  these  children  of  the  bush.  Experts  as  they 
are  in  imitating  bird  notes  and  animal  sounds, 
they  use  them  to  account  in  their  sports.  Our 
Miss  Edith  Bell  tells  us  of  one: 

"I  have  frequently  observed  a  group  of 
children  hide  in  the  grass  or  bush  and  imitate 
the  chatter  of  monkeys  so  perfectly  that  passers- 
by  mistake  them  for  a  troupe  of  these  persistent 
chatterers.  At  other  times  bird  calls  are  given 
so  that  answers  are  received  from  a  real  bird 
which  mistakes  the  note  for  that  of  its  mate. 

"A  favorite  pastime  for  evening  is  to  assemble 
after  the  meal  for  animal  games.  Contests  are 
held  and  the  best  imitators  are  highly  applauded. 
My  first  observation  of  this  sport  was  on  a  dark 
I*  evening.  A  girl  of  possibly  ten  years,  who  had 
hidden  in  the  gloom  back  from  the  fire's  glow, 
uttered  a  series  of  dull  barks  which  usually 
indicate  the  proximity  of  a  troop  of  baboons. 
In  fright  I  turned  my  head,  expecting  to  see 


h 


AND   AMONG   THE    KRAALS 


lo7 


one  very  near.  On  doing  so  I  was  amazed  and 
terrified  to  see  an  animal-like  creature  bound 
on  all  fours  from  the  darkness,  and  hop  about 
among  the  girls  seated  there.  The  whites  of  the 
rolling  eyes  and  the  prominent  teeth  gleamed 
in  the  firelight  as  the  hideous-looking  beast 
jumped  around,  frightening  us  all.  The  picture 
was  so  weird,  the  imitation  so  perfect,  that 
quite  a  few  moments  elapsed  before  I  could  be 
convinced  the  performer  was  Matiwoma,  and 
not  a  real  baboon." 


A   CONTRAST   IN  SCHOOLS 

There  is  the  semblance  of  a  school,  to  be  sure, 
somewhere  out  in  the  bush.  In  one  of  these  a 
boy  of  tender  years  is  hideously  taught  to  be  a 
man.  In  a  similar  one  little  girls  are  inducted 
into  a  knowledge  of  the  things  —  and  evil 
enough  they  are  —  which  will  some  day  fall 
within  the  sphere  of  womanhood.  Deeply 
hidden  in  some  forest  place  is  the  "  bush  school." 
Deep  and  dark  are  the  mysteries  which  are 
there  expounded. 

A  great  gulf  of  contrast  lies  between  this  so- 
called  school  in  the  bush,  and  such  schools  as 
have  been  established  by  the  Woman's  Foreign 
Missionary  Society  at  Quessua  and  Old  Umtali. 
Would  there  were  more  such  upon  our  list  for 
Africa ! 

Christian  work  among  these  dusky  daughters 


UNDER  THE  CRESCENT 


nil 


of  a  degraded  race  has  demonstrated  that 
very  pure  white  hearts  may  beat  within  very 
black  bodies.  To  be  sure  when  they  come  — 
back  with  the  missionary  who  has  been  itinerat- 
ing, possibly  —  they  are  unclad,  unkempt, 
unclean.  They  are  terrified  when  the  little 
mission  organ  is  played,  and  ask,  "  What  makes 
the  box  cry?"  Having  lived  in  real  "flats" 
all  their  lives,  they  are  desperately  afraid  to 
even  attempt  to  climb  the  stairs.  Oh,  yes, 
they  are  crude  enough. 

But  wait!  We  hear  the  government  inspector 
saying  in  his  report,  after  he  visits  our  schools: 
"I  saw  the  girls  sewing,  washing,  ironing,  etc. 
Everything  was  going  smoothly  —  the  girls 
looked  clean  and  neat  and  it  was  not  difficult 
to  see  from  their  bright  faces  that  they  were 
happy  in  their  work.  A  feature  of  the  education 
of  these  girls  is  the  elementary  training  given 
in  the  care  of  babies." 

The  missionary,  too,  knows  all  of  this,  yet 
she  writes:  "The  best  thing  this  year  (1916) 
has  been  the  going  out  of  three  of  our  girls  to 
help  Mrs.  Paisley  with  those  people  who  so 
need  them.  At  that  place,  within  a  radius  of 
thirty-five  miles,  there  are  more  than  thirty 
thousand  naked,   hungry,   uncared-for   souls." 

These  then  are  real  Student  Volunteers. 
They  have  themselves  emerged  from  the  kraals 
of  the  African  bush  into  the  white  radiance  of 


AND  AMONG  THE  KRAALS 


159 


lives  illuminated  by  Divine  Love.  Now  they 
retrace  their  steps,  turning  once  more  toward 
the  dark  forest,  toward  their  own  kin.  And  — 
ah,  the  wonder  of  it  —  cutting  long  shafts  of 
brightness  through  pagan  gloom  there  enter 
with  them  Jesus  Christ,  the  Light  of  the  World ! 


//3oa& 


UC  SOUTH!  RN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  906  991     5 

CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
University  of  California,  San  Diego 


^9# 


NOV  09 

OCT  3Q  1978 


TE  DUE 


CI  39 


UCSD  Libr. 


